Rain, Rain Go Away.....

Hey buddy, its almost end of September, time for you to move on....but you are still pouring merrily as if you have just begun.

I love you friend and look forward to your arrival every June....but you know what, I am missing that sweltering heat I am so used to....give it a chance too dost!!!

My cotton clothes, which I pack away at the beginning of Monsoon are beckoning me....and my synthetic material clothes can take only so much....I mean they have faced heavy downpours, murky water splashed by passing vehicles, et al!!!

And yesterday evening was the last straw. I was carry such heavy bags (almost 10 kgs) back home from office. And what do you do?? You decide to come down in thick sheets, making it impossible for me to balance my bags and the umbrella. The visibility on roads was near zero and the poor rickshaw was trying stoically not to be blown away by your best buddy Wind, hollering his lungs out. And your other friends were keeping you company too, yeah those two Lightening and Thunder....the scene was right out of some horror flick....

Now, I cannot help empathizing with little Johnny, who would request you to go away in my nursery rythms....

As much as you love this city, you will have to bid adieu my friend, atleast for the next eight months....or the Bombayites might start a signature campaign against you....then don’t tell me I didn’t warn you!!

So long Rain bhai, be back next year!!!

The Smuggled Puppy.....

I saw him again yesterday, after a gap of about three years. I recognized him immediately. The same white with spots of black.

Yes, we had smuggled him from Goa to Bombay. One of the friends on our visit to Goa three years ago, in the month of August, had fallen for this pup and wanted desperately to bring it back with him to Bombay. Even then, Fraser was a quite and contemplative pup. Unlike his sister, who was very aggressive.

The question was how does one carry a pup from Goa to Bombay in a public transport. We didn’t want him to travel in a goods compartment, all alone…..neither could we afford the cost. What did we do?? He he….we packed the pup into an empty beers carton and he travelled with us in our compartment right under the nose of the Ticket Checker (TC). Ofcourse, we didn’t seal the carton, the lid was open so that we could feed him from time to time. The poor scared pup wouldn’t even whimper.

Every time the train would halt at any station, we would take the pup out for a walk and then put him back in his carton once the train started to move. Every time we were out with the pup, people around us would see us play with him and when the train was on the move, the pup would disappear!! Well, inevitably the TC got curious and when we were only a couple of hours away from Bombay, he asked to check our carton and out peeped Fraser. God! Were we scared?? Will the TC take us to police?? Will he confiscate Fraser??

Nah, he did suggest that we put Fraser in goods compartment and pay up Rs. 2000/- (imagine!!!) and Fraser can continue his journey to Bombay. But we reasoned with him that it was so small and scared, he wont survive without us, besides we were just about reaching Bombay and we didn’t have so much money on us either and so on and on we went till he agreed to let the issue rest for Rs. 150/-. Phew!!!

Fraser has grown up, tall and lean. His eyes are so wise and intelligent. A very loving and sensitive dog.

The Third Insight - "Awareness of Energy"

The Third Insight brings a transformed understanding of the physical universe. Humans would discover a new energy, which formed the basis of and radiated outward from all things, including ourselves.

The whole of Einstein’s life’s work was to show that what we perceive as hard matter is mostly empty space with a pattern of energy running through it. This includes ourselves. The basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe – as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems, which is exactly what the Third Insight would lead us to believe.

The manuscript said the human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty. The perception of beauty is a kind of barometer telling each of us how close we are to actually perceiving the energy. This is clear because once you observe this energy, you realise it’s on the same continuum as beauty. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of colour. It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive. When we focus on an object, you can see its unique beauty. It is as though first you see the objects, then you see their uniqueness and presence and then it happens, something gets amplified in the pure beauty of their physical expression, at which time you can see the energy field of that object. One can see an energy field around a person too.

Do we know to what extent does the physical universe as a whole – since it is made up of the same basic energy – respond to our expectations? To what extent do our expectations create all the things that happen to us? Think of the events in your life. The old Newtonian idea is that everything happens by chance; that one can make good decisions and be prepared, but that every event has its own line of causation independent of our attitude.

After the recent discoveries of modern physics, we may legitimately ask if the universe is more dynamic than that. Perhaps the universe runs mechanistically as a basic operation, but then also subtly responds to the mental energy, we project out into it. Why not? If we can make a plant grow faster (which is a proven experiment) by concentrating our energy on that plant, maybe we can make certain events come faster – or slower, depending on how we think.

The Third Insight elaborates on the nature of beauty, describing this perception as the one through which humans would eventually learn to observe energy fields. Once this occurred, then our understanding of the physical universe would quickly transform.