Seven Reasons Why We May Live Longer

Studies shows that people who have a spiritual practice tend to live longer, recover faster from illness, and experience less distress in the face of calamity. In a recent well-researched and thoughtful book, God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connections(John Wiley & Sons, 2001), epidemiologist Jeff Levin, Ph.D., has laid out seven pathways by which "religious or spiritual affiliation" may lead to better health.

1. Healthy lifestyle and social support
There is evidence that religious people may live longer because they are better stewards of their bodies. For example, many religious teachings discourage the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, meat, and drugs, all of which can endanger health. Religious people also tend to have more friends and stronger community. Social support is known to contribute to health.

2. Spiritual Practice
Practices such as prayer and meditation have been shown to improve health by promoting physiologic relaxation and strengthening the immune system.

3. Personality
Many religions prescribe attitudes and ways of relating to others that promote health. For example, most religions teach forgiveness, compassion, and peaceful comportment, which directly promote health. Practitioners who release anger and forgive or be helpful are likely to have decreased blood pressure, increased immune function.

4. Cognitive style
Religions teach faith, hope, and optimism, all of which are associated with better medical outcomes.

5. Mystical experience
Mystical experiences may occur with spiritual practices such as prolonged prayer, chanting or meditation These experiences may activate bio energy or life force that promotes natural, innate healing.

6. Supernatural force or intervention
There is a principle that is neither physical, emotional, nor mental, which is, nevertheless, the source of our aliveness and experience. Whatever this force might be, mounting evidence from studies at Duke, Columbia, the Mid-America Heart Institute suggests that an efficacy to healing intention or prayer separate from healthy lifestyle, social support, personality, spiritual practice, cognitive style or even altered states. Thus one way spirituality heals - is spiritual.

"During the past thirty years, people from all civilized countries on earth have consulted me. Among all my patients in the second of half of life - that is to say, over thirty-five - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that even one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook." - Carl Jung

Source: Self-Realization Fellowship Magazine, Winter 2002

Prescription for Health : All You Need Is "Love"

Research Shows Expressing Love Is Crucial To Your Health

Imagine getting a prescription that reads: "100 milligrams of love, twice daily, unlimited renewals." Caring, of course can't be put in a capsule, but can heal as powerfully as medicine. "Love is a basic human need," says Dean Ornish, M.D., author of Love and Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Health."When we don't get it, we pay a price in how long we live and how likely we are to get sick."

We may also pay a price if we don't give love. According to Stephen Post, Ph.D., professor of bioethics and religion at Ohio's Case Western University, research shows that loving acts neutralize the kind of negative emotions that adversely affect immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular function.

But beyond our need to get and give it, what is love? How do we define something as essential and invisible as air? Researchers often look at human connection as the cardinal signal of love.

Scientists have taken the study of love in new directions, examining everything from the impact of mother's smile on her baby to the healing power of hugs. An interesting discovery has been how many kinds of connections count. Ties to friends, family, work, neighbours, and community can bolster health and happiness.

Beyond Romance
A powerful shift is occurring in the understanding of love, declares Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize winning science writer and author of Love at Goon Parle:Harry Hallow and the Science of Affection. " The science of today puts kindness ahead of romance," she says. The field of psychology ha shifted from Freud and sexuality to an adult view of love as responsibility and caring. The message is very clear: Taking care of each other is the nature of love."

Giving love allows you to ascertain who you are. "I define love as the un-sought for discovery of self through giving," Post says. He sees love as our indestructible core, an insight he confirmed when he began to work with Alzheimer's sufferers. " People with cognitive deficits are incredibly sensitive to affection. Any person can respond profoundly to love."

Post recalls one Alzheimer's patient who handed him a twig with a big smile. "If love was a wind, you'd have been blown off by your chair by the love in his eyes." he says.

Extend and Connect

So how do we "self-medicate" with love?

You can begin with a simple exercise in awareness: Choose a neutral person in your world, perhaps someone who sells you a morning coffee, and think of that person with compassion. "This practice awakens feelings of resonance and joy, which actually changes your biology (by releasing the chemical dopamine the brain)," says Sally Severino, M.D., professor of psychiatrhy ay University of New Mexico.

Move on to visualizing those closest to you with compassion. "The key is to cultivate a feeling of joy when you connect to others," says University of California psychiatrist Jeffery Schwartz, M.D. His brain-imaging studies have shown that compassionate practices stabilizes and balances brain functions, sometimes as effectively as medications such as antidepressants.

Finally, remember that love takes many forms, and that connection is more than romantic love. Expand your circle of love into a friendship toward all living things.

"I used to feel loved because i thought I was special," says Ornish. "Now I feel special because I am loved and I can love."
Your Rx (prescription) for Love

Your Rx For Love

Here are some simple actions to bring more love into your life.

1. Do small things with great kindness
2. Volunteer
3. Touch and be touched

4. Avoid rudeness

5. Love and do what you will

"If you get into a state of love, no matter what you do , it's going to be good." - St. Augustine

Source: Self-Realization Magazine, Issue: Summer 2008

Can Meditation affect Your Health @ the Genetic Level?

DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid)

Say "Om": Doctors Find Meditation Affects Your Body
A Preliminary Study Shows Meditating Turns off Stress-Related Genes

It turns out peaceful thoughts really can influence our bodies, right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA, according to a new study.

Researchers for the study, published in the Public Library of Science, took blood samples from a group of 19 people who habitually meditated or prayed for years, and 19 others who never meditated.The researchers ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes -- about 1,000 of them -- than the nonmeditating group.

The more these stress-related genes are expressed, the more the body will have a stress response like high blood pressure or inflammation. Over long periods of time, these stress responses can worsen high blood pressure, pain syndromes and other conditions.

The nonmeditating group then spent 10 minutes a day for eight weeks training in relaxation techniques that involved repeating a prayer, thought, sound, phrase or movement.

"What this does is to break the train of everyday thought -- you no longer have stressful thoughts and because of that the body is able to return to a healthy state," said Dr. Herbert Benson, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute Mind/Body Medicine and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

By the end of the training, the novice meditating group was also suppressing stress-related genes, although at lower levels than those of the long-term meditating people.

Meditation in the Genes

"In the old days, we thought the mind didn't affect the body," Benson said. "In truth, it's breaking down the very old rule."

Indeed, fellow mind-body researchers are finding more evidence that meditation and spiritual practices can influence the body in elemental ways.

Dr. Dean Ornish, professor of medicine and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute at the University of California at San Francisco, recently found a relationship between meditation and genes in prostate cancer.

"This is an important pilot study showing that meditation alone may favorably alter gene expression in whole blood," Ornish said. "These findings provide additional evidence to our recent study in PNAS [the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] showing that meditation -- when combined with better nutrition and moderate exercise -- also favorably altered gene expression in prostate tissue."

But researchers warn that only preliminary steps have been taken toward establishing a connection between genes and meditation.

"It's on the limits of sensitivity of where we can go on genomics and proteomics," said Towia Libermann, co-author of the study and director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Genomics Center in Boston. "We can't go into the brain itself, so a lot of what we do is going on in the blood."

That difficult step from brain to blood can make research to link meditation and genetics difficult.
"Things happen, and genes get turned on or turned off -- the genes make RNA, then the RNA makes proteins," said Dr. Charles Raison, clinical director of the Mind Body Program in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta.

Raison said it is those final proteins in the process that have a significant effect on the body, and sometimes RNA doesn't end up making those proteins. Since genomic analysis measures only the RNA in the blood, it can't guarantee that RNA had a specific effect on the body.

"Not everything gets down to the business end of the gun," said Raison, who would also have liked to see more definition of what meditation means in the study as opposed to including any forms of repetitive prayer or yoga.

Sorce:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=5287805&page=1

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/labnotes/archive/2008/7/1.aspx

Want to really Chill Out? - Try Ice Hotel - built of ice and snow

Ice Hotel Entrance


Lighted Entrance

Reception Area

Main Hall

Main hall

Suite Room - Forest effect

Suite room

Ice Bar

Ice Bar

Ice Church
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The other day I watched a programme about ICEHOTEL on Discovery Channel (on Astro). They showed how is the hotel built. It is amazing and a lot of hard work. A lot of engineering and artistic brains are behind building this beautiful piece of creation. If you really want to chill out in a unique place, go for Ice Hotel. But hang on! it is not cheap! atleast USD1000 per night. :)
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ICEHOTEL is situated in the village Jukkasjärvi, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. The heart and backbone is the River Torne flowing freely through the unspoilt wilderness. Covered with a meter thick ice layer winter time the river is the source of all our art, architecture and design. The pure water and the steady movement of the river creates the clearest ice possible.

Ten thousand years ago, glaciers carved a riverbed and the Torne River was born. Since then, the crystal-clear, pure water of the Torne River has flowed freely along its 600-kilometer path through Lapland out to the sea in the southeast. The entire ICEHOTEL is on loan from the mighty Torne River and is a place where time stands still. When the spring comes and then finally the summer, the entire creation will once again become part of the rushing rapids coursing toward the sea.

ICEHOTEL takes shape
As soon as winter begins, a team of snow builders, architects, designers and artists from all over the world gather in the little town of Jukkasjärvi far north of the Arctic Circle. Under the direction of the ICEHOTEL Art & Design Group, they create each year’s version of ICEHOTEL.

The STORY: about a hotel made of ice and snow
If it is possible to build a hotel of ice in a small village 200km inside the Arctic Circle, which strikes the whole world with amazement, then anything is possible. The story of ICEHOTEL is indeed a fairy tale come true. The free flowing Torne River is the origin and artery of ICEHOTEL. From the river, the ice of ICEHOTEL is borrowed each year. And it is here, on the river shores in the village of Jukkasjärvi that our story begins.
It started off as a summer destination
The company Jukkas (present day ICEHOTEL) has been a tourist operator in the region since the 1970s. For many years the company focus was on the summer season and the magnificent outdoor experiences offered by the land of the midnight sun. During the dark winter the river was frozen and the people of the small village of Jukkasjärvi went into hibernation.
Cold and darkness as an experience
By the end of the 1980s it was decided to turn things around. Instead of viewing the dark and cold winter as a disadvantage, the unique elements of the arctic were to be regarded an asset. Inspired by the work of visiting Japanese ice artists, in 1990 the French artist Jannot Derit was invited to have the opening of his exhibition in a specially built igloo on the frozen Torne River. The 60 square metre building named Artic Hall attracted many curious visitors to the area.
ICEHOTEL known all over the world
One night a group of foreign guests, equipped with reindeer hides and sleeping bags, decided it would be a good idea to use the cylindrical shaped igloo as accommodation. The following morning the brave group raved about the unique sensation of sleeping in an igloo. Hence, the concept of ICEHOTEL was born. A lot has happened since. Today ICEHOTEL is world famous for its unique concept, its fantastic works of art and its extraordinary experiences. The fairy tale nature of ICEHOTEL brings out the child in guests of all ages.
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Source: http://www.icehotel.com/

India's First Mission To Moon - CHANDRAYAAN - 1

Moon Impact Probe

Polar Satellite Vehicle (PSLV-C11)

If all goes well, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, to be launched by the Polar Satellite Vehicle (PSLV-C11) on October 22 at 6.20 a.m. from the Sriharikota space port, will reach the lunar orbit on November 8, according to M.Y.S. Prasad, Associate Director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.

About 1,000 engineers and technicians of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have rolled up their sleeves and are working hard for the past two months to ensure a flawless launch. The 52-hour countdown will begin on October 20 at 4 a.m.

On Saturday, the PSLV-C11, which is 44.4 metres tall and weighs 316 tonnes, looked majestic in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) of the state-of-the-art second launch pad on the Sriharikota island. As it gleamed in white and brown colours, the VAB’s massive doors, in contrast, shone in speckled grey.

“All checks on the vehicle are completed. The vehicle is now ready to receive the satellite,” declared T. Subba Reddy, Manager, Second Launch Pad, when journalists visited the complex.
A few kilometres away, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which weighs 1,380 kg, is undergoing a battery of tests to test its flight-worthiness.

The spacecraft will be moved to the VAB on October 14 and married up with the PSLV-11. The “marriage ceremonies” such as filling Chandrayaan-1 with propellants and gas, and cobbling of the heat-shield which protects the spacecraft through searing heat when the rocket climbs through the atmosphere, will be performed over the next four days. On October 18 will begin the extremely slow journey of the rocket with the spacecraft, as if it were a temple chariot with the deity, from the VAB to the launch pad.

The PSLV, which stands on a mobile platform, will be wheeled on rail tracks to the launch pad, also called the umbilical tower, which is one km away. A powerful hydraulic bogey system will slowly pull the vehicle. The one-km journey will take two hours!

“The movement of the vehicle to the launch pad will take place on October 18. There will be minimum four days of work on the launch pad. The launch will take place on October 22 at 6.20 a.m., provided the weather supports us,” said M.C. Dathan, Director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.

However, V. Krishnamurthy, the Range Safety Officer for the mission, is a confident man. “Rains do not matter. The launch vehicle is rain-proof. It can get drenched and we can still launch,” he asserted.

The PSLV had lifted off earlier when it was pouring over the island. Only a cyclone would pose a problem to the launch on time. Since this was the time when the north-east monsoon set in, Mr. Krishnamurthy said ISRO had formed a team of weather specialists who would be in Sriharikota six days before the launch.

Depending on their inputs, ISRO would take a decision on when to ignite the rocket.

Chandrayaan-1 will carry 730 kg of propellants. About 600 kg of these propellants will be used to put the spacecraft into lunar orbit at an altitude of 100 km. The spacecraft will have a mission-life of two years and use up 70 kg of propellants during this period, Mr. Prasad said.

Chandrayaan-1 has 11 scientific payloads — five from India and six from abroad. The payloads from abroad includes those from NASA, the European Space Agency and Bulgaria. The payloads will map the chemicals and minerals on the moon, and also prepare a 3-diemensional map of the entire lunar surface. The mission will also give clues on the early origin of the moon.

Mr. Prasad said, “We will be able to confirm whether there is water on the surface of the moon near the Poles with the help of the Chandrayaan mission.” Water on the moon was first identified by a NASA mission called Clementine. Based on that, NASA concluded that there could be a possibility of water in the moon’s South Pole, he added.

Moon Impact Probe
S. Satish, Director, Publications and Public Relations, ISRO, said an important Indian payload on the Chandrayaan-1 was the Moon Impact Probe (MIP). When the spacecraft reached the lunar orbit at an altitude of 100 km, the MIP would eject from Chandrayaan. As the MIP sped towards the moon’s surface, its video-camera would take pictures of the lunar surface.

Its altimeter would measure the instantaneous altitude from the moon. A third instrument, a mass spectrometer, would sniff the tenuous atmosphere above the moon. V. Seshagiri Rao, Deputy Director, Range Operations, Sriharikota, said each payload on the Chandrayaan, was subjected to different tests at Sriharikota.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/12/stories/2008101260901000.htm

Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satasang Society of India: Unfolding of a Great Vision

Excerpts from a talk given by a monk at Self-Realization Fellowship's 75th Anniversary World Convocation, Los Angeles, July 14, 1995

"Renaissance" means rebirth. In the West, we look at history as a linear progression and assume that the farther we go into the future, the more evolved and refined things will be. But the yogis of India teach that history is cyclical. It moves in giant 24,000 cycles - from higher ages to lower ones and back up again, over and over.

The Florentines in the Renaissance looked back to the classical cultures for a model of ideal civilization; they idolized ancient Rome. And whom did the Romans idolize? the Greeks, who in turn idolized the Egyptians. Do you know why? Though very few Western historians could answer, it is because the Egyptians were a higher-age culture. Truths from past ages that were much more advanced than ours were encrypted in the Egyptians' hieroglyphics, in symbolism we still don't understand.

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, our guru Paramahansa Yogananda mentioned the civilizations of higher ages in ancient India, Egypt, Japan, China, Mexico - all over he world. Everyone of them has long since disintegrated, except India's. India's wisdom has survived all these centuries because, instead of carving their legacy in symbols and stone, her masters maintained a living spiritual tradition from guru to disciple. Even when history descended to the dark ages, the guru-disciple relationship continued to produce realized saints who kept that sacred flame alive, century after century. This is the key point - these teachings that our Gurus ( Self-Realization Fellowship Gurus) reintroduced to the world are not new; they are he wisdom of the highest ages becoming known again. And now that in our time the great cycle of ages is beginning to ascend once more, people are not only ready again to understand this higher wisdom , they are demanding it.

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, our guru tells us: "Unknown to society in general, a great spiritual renaissance started in 1861in a remote corner of Banaras." That was when Lahiri Mahasaya, at the request of Mahavtar Babaji, began initiating disciples into Kriya Yoga. And it was 1920 that the final stage of this renaissance truly got under way, for it was in that year that our Guru, Paramahansaji - whose work had begun in 1917 as Yogoda Satsang Society of India - beheld in a great vision a panorama of Western faces and heard God calling him to America. After a few days later he was ordained by Babaji to begin his world mission of spreading the science of Kriya Yoga worldwide.

"India has sent these Self-Realization Fellowship teachings," our Guru said, "to show you how to expand your consciousness to receive the infinite wisdom, the infinite love, the infinite joy of God."

As Guruji often said, he did not come to bring a new teaching or a new religion, but the essence, the truth, behind all religions. These teachings are more than religion; they are the truth that upholds life itself. If you want to be a good parent, you'd better have more than platitudes to answer your children's questions. If you want to know the secrets of getting along with others, of creating fulfilling relationships, you need more than religious dogma. Or if you want to be a successful businessman, these teachings are going to help you more than anything else you could ever study, because they give you the divine laws of success. Our Guru's teachings give a practical understanding of the basic laws of life that is incredible in its breadth.

Once a devotee of this path (of Self-Realization Fellowship) was talking about how the teachings applied to his work, and mentioned the words work and service. I asked him, "What is your definition of work and how does it differ from service?" He thought for just a minute and said, "Well, in work you produce something and in service you become something." I thought, this is Truth! Sincere members of Self-Realization Fellowship are not just sitting and studying about truth - they are living it; they are manifesting it; that's how exciting it is. And that is why these teachings will be at the core of the coming age.

Source: Self-Realization Fellowship magazine, Issue: Fall 1995

Picture: Self-Realization Fellowship International Headquarters Building on Mt. Washington in Los Angeles.

Big Bang Experiment Ready To Go TODAY - WEDNESDAY, September 10, 2008

Big Bang Experiment Ready To Go TODAY - WEDNESDAY, September 10, 2008 at Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire (CERN)

Video Presentaion:
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=90338

Thousands of scientists have spent more than a decade building the Large Hadron Collider at the European Centre For Nuclear Research in Geneva.

By smashing atoms together, the machine will recreate the conditions just after the 'Big Bang' when the universe was created.

The machinery is housed in a 17 mile tunnel 100 metres beneath Switzerland and France. Atoms will race around at virtually the speed of light in an atmosphere colder than outer space.

The millions of collisions will create temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the sun.

Scientists hope that will uncover secrets about the universe's structure and reveal more about dark matter.

They also believe the experiment could confirm the existence of the so-called 'Higgs Boson', dubbed the 'God Particle', which would explain why some particles have differing mass. The theory is named after British scientist Peter Higgs, who developed it in 1964, but no-one has ever seen the particle.

Scientists have also dismissed claims that the experiment will create black holes to swallow up the planet.

Physicist Dr Pippa Wells said: "In the universe at the moment the stars we see don't explain how the stars and galaxies move around each other. There must be more 'stuff' out there."

Sources:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL846768920080908

Meditation-Based Relaxation Techniques Produce Brain Wave Patterns Similar to Sleep

By Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs

Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs is an Insomnia Specialist at the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a leading authority on the treatment of insomnia.

As a Senior Scientist at Harvard's Mind/Body Medical Institute and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where he spent almost 20 years treating and researching insomnia, he developed the first drug-free program for insomnia proven to be more effective than sleeping pills. His insomnia research at Harvard Medical School was funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in journals such as the Archives of Internal Medicine.

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Did you know?

Insomnia now affects over half of all adults.

Meditation and relaxation techniques have been proven to be effective for insomnia.

These techniques improve sleep by producing brain wave patterns that are similar to the early stages of sleep.

Insomnia is becoming increasingly prevalent in our high-stress, fast-paced world. Recent polls by the National Sleep Foundation in the United States found that 35% of adults experience insomnia every night and almost 60% of adults experience insomnia at least a few nights per week. Although prescription and over-the-counter sleep aids are the most common treatments for insomnia, non-drug therapies for insomnia are becoming increasingly popular due to the many side effects of sleep aids and increasing scientific evidence that non-drug treatments are effective for insomnia.

One popular non-drug treatment for insomnia is meditation and relaxation techniques. The use of these techniques for insomnia is based on the fact that individuals who suffer from insomnia exhibit elevated brain arousal that is associated with excessive mental activity during the night. This is often described by insomniacs as "racing thoughts". Researchers have consistently documented this excessive mental arousal as measured by increased fast brain wave patterns called "beta" activity. Beta activity, an alertness brain wave, is elevated both at sleep-onset and during the night, particularly in dream sleep, in insomniacs. This may explain why insomniacs overestimate how long they are awake during the night, since beta activity may alter the usual sense of time. As a result of these findings, insomnia is now conceptualized as a disorder of excessive brain arousal, and interventions designed to reduce insomnia exert their clinical effects by reducing this excessive arousal.

Although meditation and relaxation techniques are widely used to treat a variety of health problems (including hypertension, headaches, anxiety, and irritable bowel syndrome) and have also been used successfully to treat insomnia, it has been presumed that these techniques work by altering brain wave activity and reducing brain arousal. However, few well-controlled studies have actually measured the effects of meditation and relaxation techniques on brain activity.

In a study in the current issue of Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback , Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs and Dr. Richard Friedman measured the effects of meditation-based relaxation techniques on brain wave activity at Harvard Medical School . They compared a group of subjects who practiced a meditation-based relaxation technique daily for 6 weeks to a control group who listened to relaxing music for the same length of time. After six weeks of practice, the researchers measured each group's brain waves while they practiced their mediation-based relaxation or listened to music. Jacobs and Friedman found that the group who practiced the meditation-based relaxation techniques produced greater reductions in brain arousal as measured by increase in theta brain wave activity in multiple brain regions. Theta is a slow brain wave pattern that is produced during the transition from waking to sleep.

Because an increase in theta activity is associated with the onset of sleep, the Jacobs and Friedman study suggest that mediation and relaxation techniques may be similar to the early stage of sleep, called stage 1 sleep. Stage 1 is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep and is characterized by a gradual transition from a predominant alpha pattern (a "relaxed wakefulness" brain wave) to a predominant theta frequency.

The findings suggest that insomniacs can reduce elevated brain arousal by practicing meditation or relaxation techniques at bedtime or after awakening during the night. By quieting the "racing mind" and excessive mental activity during the night, insomniacs will find it easier to fall asleep at bedtime or during the night.
Source:
http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/sleep-disorders/2005/02/insomnia-meditation-relaxation.htm

New Human Race on Earth : In Contact with " Cosmic Consciousness "

Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke (18 March 1837 - 19 February 1902) (often called Maurice Bucke) was an important Canadian progressive psychiatrist in the late nineteenth century. An adventurer in his youth, he went on to study medicine, practice psychiatry, and befriend several noted men of letters. In addition to writing and delivering professional papers, Bucke wrote three book-length studies: Man's Moral Nature, Walt Whitman, and – his best known work – Cosmic Consciousness, a classic in the modern study of mystical experience.

Dr. R.M. Bucke believes that cosmic consciousness is a natural faculty of man, and that a future race of men on this earth will be born with this faculty well developed and not merely latent as it is now. Bucke's theory is that , just as man advanced from the state of simple consciousness, which he shared with animal kingdom, into a state of self-consciouness, peculiar to man alone, and marked by the development of language, so he must ineveitable come into a higher state of consciouness, distiniguished by a cosmic or universal understanding.

One selection from his book " Cosmic Consciousness " :

In contact with the flux of Cosmic Consciousness all religions known and named today will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized. Religion will absolutely dominate the race. It will not be believed and disbelieved.

It will not be part of life, belonging to certain hours, times, occasions. It will not be in sacred books nor in the mouths of priests. It will not dwell in churches and meetings and forms and days. Its life will not be in prayers, hymns nor discourses. It will not depend on special revelations, on the words of gods who came down to teach, nor any Bible or Bibles. It will have no mission to save men from their sins or secure them entrance into heaven. It will not teach a future immortality nor future glories, for immortality and all glory will exist in here and now. The evidence of immortality will live in every heart as sight in every eye. Doubt of God and of eternal life will be as impossible as now doubt of existance; the evidence of each will be the same. Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life. Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanantly replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired. Men will not worry about death or future, about the kingdom of heaven., about what may come with and after cessation of life of the present body. Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal, will feel and know that the entire universe with all its good and with all its beauty is for it and belongs to it forever. The world peopled by men possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far removed from the world of today as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self-consciouness ... This new race is in the act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth.

Hello My Blog Readers !!

It has been quite sometime since I wrote last time. Kind of busy and lazy. :)

I am back online to write again.

An Abstract Representation of Creation and Evolution of Mankind

It's a painting (very intelligently created) representing the "Creation of Universe" & "Evolution of Mankind."

The painting depicts:
1. Seven Epoch of Divine Era
2. Creation of the Divine Spirit
3. Creation of the Universe
4. Creation of a Human Spirit Pattern
5. Materilization of Humans
6. Materialistic Desires and Progress
7. Desire for Power and Love
8. Appearance of Saints, Religion and Philosophy flourishes
9. Material centred science
10. Degeneration of Spiritual impurities
11. Great convulsion of Nature
12. Baptism by Fire
13. Spiritual centred civilization
14. Humankind becomes divine
15. Towards an age of higher theocracy.

Source: From Dato Lai's (famous Malaysian architect) beautiful home

Chinese New Year Luncheon With My Spiritual Family

This sunny Sunday is another wonderful day to me. We, KL SRF Meditation group, gathered together for lunch on the occasion of Chinese New Year at the "Restaurant NEU" in PJ. Our Chinese devotees hosted the lunch. It was indeed joyful gathering with delicious Chinese Vegetarian dishes. We started with "Yee Sang". Everyone had a great time tossing the Yee Sang for luck, propsperity, health and whatever our wishes may be. Then, we enjoyed the sumptous dishes like "4 Seasons, Yam Basket, Asam Fish(sourish Veg. fish), Deep Fried Mushroom, Beans, Spinach in Superior Soup, Sea Coconut Longan with Lemon and Honey (for dessert)".
What a start - to the year of the RAT - Eating Away!! :)

The Spiritual Family Around "8" . #8 symbolizes Prosperity in Chinese belief.




3 Muskateers



4 Lovely Ladies




Wow, We Are So Happy To See The Delicious Food. Yammy, huh!





Wow, We Can't Wait To Eat






Ladies In Action







Yam Basket, Asam Fish, Deep Fried Mushroom








More Food !!

The Dessert : Sea Coconut Longan with Lemon and Honey

A Scripture of Love

By Paramahansa Yogananda from the book "The Divine Romance".

The Lord ever silently whispers to you:

I am Love. But to experience the giving and the gift of love, I divided Myself into thre; love, lover, and beloved. My love is beautiful, pure, eternally joyous, and I taste in many ways, through many forms.

As father I drink reverential love from the spring of my child's heart. As mother I drink the nectar of unconditional love from the soul-cup of the tiny baby. As child I imbibe the protecting love of the father's righteous reason. As infant I drink ceaseless love from the holy grail of material attraction. As master I drink the sympathetic love from the flask of the servant's thoughtfullness. As servant I sip respectful love from the goblet of the master's appreciation. As guru-preceptor I enjoy purest love from the chalice of the desciple's all-surrendering devotion. As friend I drink from the self-bubbling fountains of spontaneous love. As a divine friend, I quaff crystal waters of cosmic love from the reservoir of God-adoring hearts.

I am in love with Love alone, but I allow myself to be deluded when as father or mother I think and feel only for the child; when as the lover I care only for the beloved; when as servant I live only for the master. But because I love Love alone, I ultimately break this delusion of My myriad human Selves. It is for this reason that I transfer the father into the astral land when he forgets that it is My love, not his, that protects the child. I lift the babe from the mother's breast, that she might learn it is my love she adored in him. I spirit away the beloved from the lover who imagines it is she whom he loves, rather than My love responding in her.

So My love is playing hide-and-seek in all human hearts, that each might learn to discover and worship, not the temporal human receptacles of My love, but My love itself, dancing from one heart to another.

I am the love that dances human puppets on the strings of emotions and instincts, to play the drama of love on the stage of life. My love is beautiful and endlessly enjoyable when you love it alone; but the lifeline of your peace and joy is cut when instead you become entangled in human emotions and attachment.

Realize, My children, it is My love for which you yearn!

Chinese New Year luncheon @ Dato Lai & Datin Susan's House

I had great time today, in the afternoon, at Datin Susan's house. Datin Susan, momma and all their friends gathered for a delicious lunch at Datin's house. I am fortunate to join these wonderful people and had great time. Some of the pictures to treasure and cherish the moments....