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

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

Be Nourished by the Soul : Balancing, Simplifying, Making Time for God

Excerpts from an article by Sri Daya Mata, President of Self-Realization Fellowship/YSS of India.

Humanity today is suffering from spiritual malnutrition. People in parts of the world suffering from physical starvation, but millions in all nations are suffering from spiritual starvation. Science has given the means to feed everyone on this planet; it is man's spiritual poverty that makes him cling to selfishness and small-minded prejudices, thereby preventing him from eradicating hunger and other forms of deprivation.

The life anchored in truth, in wisdom, in God, is a balanced life. It starts with meditation. That is the emphasis of the routine established by Paramahansa Yogananda... The way of life he taught us consists of mediation in the morning, before we begin our duties, and at intervals through out the day; at noon, and again in the early evening when we have finished our daily work, and once more late at night ...before retiring.

It is the spiritually balanced individual who is truly successful. I am not referring monetary success; it has little meaning. That has been my(Daya Mata) experience, as it was Master's(Paramahansa Yogananda); I have met scores of materially successful human beings who have been emotional and spiritual failures - stressful; lacking inner peace and the ability to give and receive love; unable to relate harmoniously to their families, or to other human beings, or to God. A person's success cannot be measured by what he has, only by what he is and what he is able to give of himself to others.

Meditation helps us to align our outer life with inner values of the soul as nothing else in this world can.It does not take away from family life or relationships with others. On the contrary, it makes us more loving, more understanding - it makes us want to serve our husband, our wife, our children, our neighbours. Real spirituality begins when we include others in our wish for well-being, when we expand our thoughts beyond"I and me and mine."

Most shun meditation not because they truly have no time, but because they do not want to face themselves - a definite result of the interiorization of meditation. There is too much they do not like in themselves, so they would rather keep the mind on externals, never thinking too deeply about the self-improvements they need to make. Get away from such mental laziness.

How marvelously different and fulfilling is the balanced life in God shown us by Master: "Divine Mother, teach me to live with delight. May I enjoy my earthly duties and the countless beauties of creation. Help me to train my senses and appreciate Thy wondrous world of Nature. Let me savour with Thy zest all innocent pleasures. Save me from negation and unwarranted kill-joy attitudes."

Today in Western civilization people do not know how to enjoy simple things.They have become so jaded in their tastes that nothing satisfies: overstimulated outwardly, starved and empty inwardly, they take to drink or drugs to escape.

Let us go back to the simple pleasures of life. Have you ever on your day off, for example, taken a drive up into the mountains, or out into the desert or some other quiet place, had a picnic, sat quietly, and thought about God? These are real pleasures. What joy they bring once you have cultivated the sensitivity of appreciating the Lord's presence in the beauty of nature.

You might say, "Well, it would be terribly boring." But just try it once instead of going to a movie, from which you usually return restless and moody. You wanted to enjoy it, but it did not make you happy. Instead, seek natural places of beauty and solitude and listen to the still voice of God speaking through His creation. What peace it will bring to you!

One who is seeking God must practice more stillness in his life - for at least a short time each day in meditation; for a few hours on the weekend, perhaps when you get out in nature; and for several days or a week every so often.

The Science of Near-Death Experiences

"Consciousness can be experienced in some alternative dimension without our body-linked concepts of time and space. The brain is not producing consciousness, but it enables us to experience our consciousness."

A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound psychological experience, typically occurring in about 10% of people during a physical or emotional trauma, a life-threatening health crisis, or actual clinical death.

Browse the link below to read more in this TIME magazine article.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1657919-1,00.html

The Sound of Music and Plants

Article from Self-Realization Fellowship Magazine. Issue: Spring 1979

If plants could talk, one can not help but wonder what they would tell us about their likes and dislikes. In The Sound of Music and Plants, Mrs.Retallack gives the reader an insight into the emotional reaction of plants to music. Jazz, pop, country, rock, ragas, Berg, Bernstein, or Bach - which type do they most enjoy? To find out, the author, a professional musician and wife of a medical doctor, conducted scientific experiments while working on her B.A. degree at Tempel Buell College(now Colorado Women's College).

The results were so interesting that her work received worldwide recognition through the news media - articles appeared in over 500 news papers and magazines, including the New york Times, Harper's Science Digest, and Reader's Digest. In addition CBS television filmed the experiments on time-lapse camera for a special feature on Cronkite News.

What is so novel about these experiments? It is not that this type of research is new; experimentation with the effect of music on plants has been going on for years.

The experimentation of the author has unique twist. She writes: "Although others have done experiments for reasons of better production, bigger flowers, and so on, apparently I was the first in US to do scientifically controlled experiments purely to see how plants react to different types of music." By carefully setting up controlled music chambers with all factors constant except the music, placing a speaker at one end of each sound chamber and various types of vegetable, flowering, and leafy plants in the middle, she set the stage for observing the plants' reaction to the sound of music.

She watched in dismay as one group drooped, faded, and turned away from the sound source. What is more, after eighteen days, they died. Only six feet away, in another sound chamber, the drama was strikingly different: "At the 14th day, the plants nearest speaker were leaning at 60-degree angle so as to almost embrace the speaker. The growth was noticeably lush and abundant, as were the roots." The difference? The first group has been listening to "acid rock" ( the term used to define a highly percussive, heavily rhythmic kind of rock music), and the second to East Indian devotional music. The evidence gathered from this experiment led to an intriguing theory.

"Of all the various kinds of music used," the author explains, "there were three kinds, apparently different in every way, that the plants responded to most favourably: East Indian devotional, Bach's 'Orgelbuchlein(Preludes based on Hymn Tunes of the Church Year), and jazz.

The author appeals to mankind to listen to what plants are trying to say and to consciously develop music as means of inspiration and upliftment of all forms of life - as a "bridge to Infinite."

The highest mission of music is to serve as a bridge between man and God.

Click the link below for more information on the experiments:

http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp

Astral Body : An Electro-Dynamic field : A Blueprint of Human Body

The Hindu scriptures say that God has created this Universe. God thought the design of the Universe, then created a blueprint of the design and then materialised the physical Universe.

Please read the following, amazing scientific explanation for the existence of blueprint of human body (God created human beings).

Excerpts are taken from Blueprint For Immortality, by Dr. Harold Saxton Burr

Dr. Harold Saxton Burr, Ph.D., who was E. K. Hunt Professor Emeritus, Anatomy at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Burr was a member of the faculty of medicine for over forty-three years. From 1916 to the late 1950’s, he published, either alone or with others, more than ninety-three scientific papers.

Dr. Burr discovered that all living things - from men to mice, from trees to seeds - are molded and controlled by electro-dynamic fields, which could be measured and mapped with standard voltmeters. These “fields of life,” or L-fields, are the basic blueprints of all life on this planet. Their discovery is of immense significance to all of us. Dr. Burr believed that, since measurements of L-field voltages can reveal physical and mental conditions, doctors should be able to use them to diagnose illness before symptoms develop, and so would have a better chance of successful treatment.

“Electro-dynamic fields are invisible and intangible; and it is hard to visualize them. But a crude analogy may help to show what the fields of life - L-fields for short - do and why they are so important. Most people who have taken high school science will remember that if iron filings are scattered on a card held over a magnet, they will arrange themselves in the pattern of the ‘lines of force’ of the magnet’s field. And if the filings are thrown away and fresh ones scattered on the card, the new filings will assume the same pattern as the old. Something like this happens in the human body. Its molecules and cells are constantly being torn apart and rebuilt with fresh material from the food we eat. But, thanks to the controlling L-fields, the new molecules and cells are rebuilt as before and arrange themselves in the same pattern as the old ones.

“Until modern instruments revealed the existence of the controlling L-fields, biologists were at a loss to explain how our bodies ‘keep in shape’ through ceaseless metabolism and changes of material. Now the mystery has been solved: the electro-dynamic field of the body serves as a matrix or mould which preserves the ’shape’ or arrangement of any material poured into it, however often the material may be changed.

“When a cook looks at a jelly mould, she knows the shape of the jelly she will turn out of it. In much the same way, inspection with instruments of an L-field in its initial stage can reveal the future ’shape’ or arrangement of the materials it will mould. When the L-field in a frog’s egg, for instance, is examined electrically, it is possible to show the future location of the frog’s nervous system because the frog’s L-field is the matrix which will determine the form which will develop from the egg.

“To return to the cook, when she uses a battered mould, she expects to find some dents or bulges in the jelly. Similarly, a ‘battered’ L-field - that is, one with abnormal voltage patterns - can give a warning of something ‘out of shape’ in the body, sometimes in advance of actual symptoms. For example, malignancy in the ovary has been revealed by L-field measurements before any clinical sign could be observed. Such measurements, therefore, could help doctors to detect cancer early, when there is a better chance of treating it successfully.

To read the complete article, please click the link below:

http://www.wrf.org/men-women-medicine/dr-harold-s-burr.php

Yoga or Modern Science ?

An SRF publication " A World In Transition : Finding Spiritual Security in Times of Change"

(This article was written by Tara Mata ( SRF nun) in the early 1930s, before invention of the electron microscope.)

" Material science is more theoretical than true religion.Science is able to investigate, for example, the external nature and behaviour of atom. But, the practice of meditation bestows omnipresence; a yogi can become one with the atom." -- Paramahansa Yogananda
Modern invention merely copy nature. The telescope is only equivalent to a pair of abnormally bright eyes and brings us merely an extension of vision. It can not give us a new sense but simply enlarges the sense of sight we already possess. Knowledge of the electromagnetic world of atomic structure has opened to us universes so infinitely small that the microscope itself can not perceive them and we must represent them with mathematical equations. But we understand that, given a microscope of sufficient power, the atoms, being forms, could be seen. We see light, though it travels 186,000 miles a second. We see the Andromeda galaxy, and the inconceivably distant universes of stars, with the naked eye.

Because we cannot go beyond sensory perception (for even thought and imagination are forms perceived with the inward eye or the inward sight), the ancient Hindus, and doubtless every other great race of the past Golden Ages, built up their systems of mental science, Yoga (control), through which the senses are refined, broadened, and sharpened so that all natural phenomena lay open to their true-seeing gaze.

Inner Sight Needs No Spectacles

The whole body of scientific inventions that represents the genius of man at our present stage in this new cycle of upward evolution was unnecessary - like spectacles on a man of good vision - to Golden Age rishis (literally, seers). Red begins the spectrum of colours, and red ends it, but the intensity of one is not the intensity of the other. Though it is true that extremes seem to meet, and that both the most backward peoples, and those belonging to the highest civilizations, do not have inventions and observatories and scientific laboratories, yet in the first case it is due to the ignorance of Kali Yuga (Dark Age), an in the latter case to the perfected insight of Golden Age men. So we need not conclude , because the ancients left no records of inventions such as we have today, that they were ignorant men. Inventions are for Dwapara and Treta Yuga (the Bronze and Silver Ages), the midpoints between savagery and true civilization.

Thinkers of our own age are not failing to point out that our inventions are likely to lead us to ruin unless and until we are morally developed enough to direct and use them rightly. Without a better understanding of his own nature, man is unprepared for the responsibility of a knowledge of nature and her dynamic forces. So the golden Age men developed and perfected a science of man - Yoga - not a science of nature, for that follows automatically.

Note: If you like this article and would like to buy this book of great wisdom, place your order at: http://srfbooks.com/

or email me at : kalagara.suresh.kumar@gmail.com

The topics in this book are:

1. The New Millennium: End or Beginning?

2. The New Harmony Between Science and Spirituality

3. The New Religion

4.The New World

5.The New Humanity

Divine Love : Highest Goal of Religion and of Life

From SRF's new publication: The Yoga of Jesus

Though one must love God in order to know Him, it is equally true that one must know God, in order to love Him.No one can love anything of which he is entirely ignorant; no one can love a person who is completely unknown to him. But those who meditate deeply do "know," because the find the proof of the existence of God as the ever new Joy felt in meditation, or the Cosmic Sound of AUM heard in deep silence, or the Cosmic Love experienced while concentrating devotion at heart , or the Cosmic Wisdom that dawn as inner enlightenment, or the Cosmic Light evoking visions of Infinity, or the Cosmic Life felt during meditation when the little life is joined the greater Life in everything.

Any devotee who even once sensed God as anyone of His tangible manifestations in meditation cannot help but love Him when thus touched by His thrilling qualities. Most people never really love God because they little know how lovable the Lord is when He visits the heart of meditating devotee. This actual contact of the transcendental presence of God is possible to determined devotees who persist in meditation and continuous soulful prayers.

Wisdom from The Gita : Point Of No Return / The State Of Non-Return

From GOD TALKS WITH ARJUNA: THE BHAGAVAD GITA : Royal Science of God-Realization - By Paramahansa Yogananda

Chapter 5 : verse 17

To reach The State Of Non-Return, there are 3 stages:

1. Thinking on THAT (God) : Holding the attention on the object of meditation

2. Merged in THAT : Oneness with the object of meditation ( Savikalpa Samadhi)

3. Established in THAT : Permanently and continuously abiding in the state of divine oneness ( Nirvikalpa Samadhi)

After passing the above three stages, we reach to the point of no return and do not have to come back to take part in Delusion (rather don't have to come to this tragic life on earth). The " living happily ever after" will happen after we reach The State Of Non-Return.

What a simple formula and yet it takes incarnations to perfect it.

Wisdom Of The Bhagavad Gita : Freedom = Meditation on God + Desirless Activity

My Master's pearls of wisdom (from The Bhagavad Gita).

The Gita advises the most effective way to free oneself from the bad and good karma.

When a aspiring yogi ...

1. eats, he/she should enjoy eating only as a pleasurable suty for preserving the temple of God.
2. sleeps, he/she should think the body is being quited that he may subconciously enjoy the restful presence of God.
3. meditates, he/she should feel God manifesting as Joy.
4. thinks, he/she should feel that the Cosmic Wisdom is working through his/her discrimination.

By living in this consciousness the yogi dutifully acts out the plan assigned to him by God on the stage of life and no matter what he/she does, he/she is free.

Isn't it a simple formula? But, of course, quite challenging as well.

So, folks.... who ever is looking for freedom, freedom is not in money ( as the so called rich people say that financial freedom gives freedom).....get busy by following the wisdom of Gita.

My Meditation Centre in KL (Malaysia)

Our meditation centre is composed of devoted members and friends of Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsang Society of India, a worldwide religious non-profit organization, founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda for the purpose of disseminating Kriya Yoga, a definite scientific technique of attaining direct personal experience of God.

This meditation centre is my second home. I meet all my spiritual family members here once or twice a week. Here, we all meet together and meditate to spend some time with our Maker (God). It is a wonderful experience to meditate with all these wonderful souls who love God.

We love our family, our friends, our possessions etc..............but do we love the One who made us, gave us family, friends and possessions, the Lord God !!

Just think about it? Perhaps, it is worth spending some time, daily, with the One who gave us this life. :)

"Meditation is the most scientfic and cost-effective way to spend time with God".

My Guru

Paramahamsa Yogananda, my Guru, my Master.

Guru - means who dispels darkness.

My Guru showed me the purpose of life and the way to achieve it.

Meeting him (metaphysically) is another great thing happened in my life (during my stay in Malaysia).

Hindu scriptures say that "when a deciple is ready, his Master will come to him". I met my Master in the right moment when I needed someone to hang-on during my worst moments of my life. And my Master carried me through the storm of my life and brought me to the safe shores. Now, He is the captain of the boat of my life. When a Master is the captain, what to worry about? :)

To know more about my Master,
please visit http://www.srf-yogananda.org/py-life/index.html