Life and Spirituality

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reine_panoramic_Lofoten.jpg   A s you look around the world through readily accessible media, you would find entire regions from Libya to Afghanistan through Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia are disrupted. Millions of humans, children are fleeing for their lives leaving home and all behind. Never before in the history of mankind have there been so many refugees in the world. While some of these drown in the oceans while escaping, some of the others that reach safety of countries like Australia or America stand a good chance of being captured and imprisoned in inhumane conditions, even children, even for years together. One discovers that child poverty is rampant in the richest countries of the world like USA and UK and there are homeless persons dying on the streets.   When one reflects on the situation, one would perhaps arrive at the conclusion that at the root of so much human misery is nothing other than evil. It ...

Eugene Delacroix , Horse Frightened by Lightning R ecent decades have seen an unprecedented progress and proliferation of technology and democracy on the planet. While this has provided much progress to humans, one of the most essential things required by humans – peace and happiness may not have increased at all. Rather we are seeing a huge rise of wars and refugees on the one hand   and a rise of economic inequality, stress, homelessness and child poverty even in the most developed parts of the world. The most developed country in the world, the US has the highest rate of citizens in prison than mankind has ever seen since the dawn of civilization. The question to ask is why is this happening despite democracy and technology? While people offer different reasons, most are superficial ones. The real answer is quite simple; evil can make use of these things just as effectively as forces for good. In the most recent election covered widely in the media, a Party P...

S cience fiction writers and some utopian philosophers have at times mentioned the idea of a world ruled by a single world government rather than governments of different countries. It is a horrible idea if not a very stupid one. At times governments become bad, dictatorial or even brutal and while there is an escape for humans presently with several countries in the world, in the case of a world government there would be none. However, while a single world government is a horrible idea, the world does need badly, governance over parts by a world body, for limited periods, in order to rescue those parts from a terrible mess and ensuing suffering that is taking place in some countries. These are the failed states of the world where people have just not been able to get their act together on their own for various reasons. Present examples of such countries are Iraq, Syria, Libya and South Sudan to name some. At times the chaos leads to an exodus of refugees as families fle...

How to make peace, how to make war W hile many horrific wars continue in many parts of the world and humans are forced to abandon their homes and flee for their lives, the countries that contributed to creating wars often withdraw from helping out distressed refugees. Just as the character of a human is revealed in times of stress and difficulty, so is the character of nations. Anyone with his own children knows how stressful it is to walk even a mile with a babe in arms or a toddler holding a finger but the world now witnesses thousands fleeing hundreds of mile in this very situation. While they are welcomed in some countries, they witness harsh cruel behavior in others, not sympathy and help. It is even more difficult for an old or handicapped person to walk across to the corner store as every old person knows and here we see some forced to walk hundreds of mile. How upset all of us get when a prized personal possession in our homes gets damaged or lost and here we...

White Roses in the Author's Garden A human being uses many of the planets resources just to live. Humans in prehistoric times began clearing forests for agriculture and then cleared some more to cook that food. Modern humans may not depend on wood fire but make use of many other chemicals substances that harm the planet. The conclusion is that just through the process of living we tend to damage the planet as well as all life that lives on it. An ecologically sensitive human can minimize this damage but not eliminate it. Aside from the damage to the world at large, humans also end up causing harm to other humans, even near and dear ones, at times intentionally and at other times inadvertently. Small perfectly reasonable actions of ours, at times produce harm, sometimes grave ones to someone we love dearly and any human may realize this through introspection. What is the consequence of all this? A person who believes that his or her intelligence is about the highest o...

T he devil of this note is not that guy with horns but mere symbolism for all those things in the universe that keeps our souls, our inner selves, from growing but rather pulls it down into miserable and less evolved states. God on the other hand is also not a guy with a spotless and shining white robe (or cute pretty colors) surrounded by angels singing - holy, holy, holy,  but as in the rest of this blog is recognized as the Almighty universal consciousness and power of infinite extent of which everything in the universe is a part (including the less evolved parts). However, for convenience if one wished to give a picture to these things, one may do so. Developed from image at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VonSatanicBloodAngel.jpg Whereas it seems that the Almighty wishes all beings to evolve and become just as evolved as the most evolved part of the universe, the job of the devil is to do precisely the reverse. The lure the devil uses is sex, money, power,...

  A new headline was added to this blog mentioning – If you are looking for peace you are likely to find it in some of the posts of this blog. That was a conclusion based on seven years of experience with this blog. The various posts are on many assorted topics crucial to life and a visitor would have to browse or search through them to reach the ones that appeal to him or her. Peace really is a prerequisite to happiness and everything else worthwhile besides. When one has peace, a little some thing may produce happiness and when one lacks it, nothing will. Those who help promote peace in their interaction with other humans and the world, bring peace into their own lives through the eternal principle of reflection of deeds while surely making themselves more pleasing in the eyes of the Universe or the Lord in case they believe someone far mightier than them can govern this infinite universe. Persons like me believe in One considering we can not even make a single cell of ...

Photo of the Himalayan foothills near Haidakhan and superimposed text by author T his note should have been entitled women and mystics but you know how the human mind is, it would have jumped to sexual connotations and that is not what this note is about although it does have a bit of that too. It goes without saying that it is nice sexual experiences very many humans look for soon as they have had nice food and when they are done with all that, they go about the world looking for fame, wealth, important positions in society and so on. It is pursuits such as these that drives much in the world. When these interests are in control, society runs reasonably well; when any such drive becomes excessive and when it involves ethical violations, for example when a few usurp most of the wealth of the world while others starve or worse, suffer homelessness, then we have an upheaval and people may rise to chop the head off a queen as they did in France or to have a communist revo...

And Gaza too Dark Clouds over Iraq and Syria - oil on canvas by ashok W hile much of the world watches the turmoil in Iraq and Syria with anguish, it is not that easy solutions to the problem were not possible. They are possible even now if what follows is heeded but there is someone who would lose - The Arms industry. How tragic it is that the world has seen such tragic scenes in Gaza, Iraq and Syria for so long, especially when far easier, far less violent solutions to the issues have been in the public domain for years now, some as indicated and linked in this post.  These solutions are not just in hindsight but have been in the public domain for years.  An old Facebook note is copied here verbatim with the latest update as below. Years ago, I wrote my views on the crisis in Iraq and because of my concern for the country, I even communicated my views to the White House and Downing street, for within my note was a suggestion for a peaceful future for that country....

backyard trees This blog and others by this author have repeatedly stressed the importance of living in green spaces and of increasing green spaces on our planet by endeavors such as planting trees and designing cities to include designer green areas http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2012/06/green-hybrid-city.html . Some of the advantages mentioned were felt intuitively but were not backed by scientific evidence. All this changed this month when the results of a new study due to the University of Edinburgh were published in the journal of Sports Medicine. What the researchers found was that green spaces lessen brain fatigue with all its attendant benefits. These benefits include reduced stress and improved mental and physical health. In another blog of this author (steamcenter.blogspot.com) dealing with technological matters in layman style, this blogger has stressed the contribution of increasing greenery for improving the climate on the planet and in the present blog t...