Kochi, India and St. Thomas

The study of consciousness is difficult scientifically because science is a game that rests on the three pillars of empiricism, determinism and materialism.  There is no objectivity in spirituality.  By it’s very nature it’s a subjective phenomena.  I feel I levitated and others may even see I levitate but it matters not in the spiritual domain.  If I’m healed of cancer I suppose I want that healing to be ‘objective’.  This occurs but mostly because healing is a self healing phenomena.  Just as a neut grows back it’s tail we have the capacity to heal ourselves if only we can find the key. The key may well be a faith healer or a prayer.
What is most interesting is that electroencephalogram studies show that areas of the brain that are associated with an action fire in preparation for the action before the study subject is even aware of the intent.  That suggest we all may confabulate our existence, slaves to fate or determinism with the illusion of free will. I characterize that as being a ‘voice over’ on a ‘comic strip’.
The Tibetans believe we are a cast of characters who form a play with villains and heroines and call this ‘my life’.  According to karma in this dharma rendition of Brahman as Emerson wrote, the ‘red slayer thinks  he slays and the slain thinks he is slain, they know not well the ways I keep, and turn and toss again’.
I always think that in the beginning there was God and God created the heavens and the earth. There wasn’t God and building blocks.  I loved holograms because they were as close as man had come to understanding the pure nature of the spiritual. Fractuals are as exciting as DNA. The whole code of life is a song or script.  Considering St. John and the word, it’s a musical score.
“Without love where would we be now?,theDoobie Brother’s line shared poignantly  at this years IDAA meeting.
I have a lovely view here of the backwater rivers, the great port of Kochi, thousands of years old on the Spice Trade Route. It was called the ‘Queen of the Arabian Sea.'
 In the far horizon I imagine I see the Arabian Sea.  It would be wondrous to sail here.  A deep water harbour is more likely closer to the ocean. The Indian Navy and Coast Guard have bases near here. Rivers have been the highways for as long as  roads. The European success in colonizing India was through the superiority of their offshore sailing vessels armed with cannon. They could control the seas and cut off the trade routes.
At breakfast we saw a fair mix of westerners and easterners.  This hotel has that flavour I associate with Hawai tourism.  A lovely western lady with what I took for a Boston accent sat next to us in the Mosaic restaurant.  She spoke to Laura when she was asking about coffee.
“She looks and sounds like Julia Roberts,” Laura said. “I”m living in an episode of Eat, Pray, Love.”  I’m curious about the holy men who came here  I’ve arranged a tour of the St. Thomas church this afternoon. It’s not that far apparently.
“Become passers-by’, Jesus taught in the St. Thomas scriptures.
“Whoever has come to understand the world has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world'.
Jesus said, “Blessed is the man who has suffered and found life."
“Take heed of the Living One while you are alive, lest you die and seek to see Him and be unable to do so.”
Jesus said, “If they say to you, ‘Where did you come from?’ say to them, “We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on it’s own accord and established (itself) and became manifest through their image.” If they say to you, “Is it you?’ say “We are the children we are the elect of the Living Father.” If they ask you, “What is the sign of your father in you?, say to them, “It is movement and repose.”
“The foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and rest.”

Spirituality and India

I once wrote a paper on heaven.  I compared the various outcomes of religious life and concluded Christians and Taoists had the best to offer.  PersonallyI’ve always liked Mark Twain’s Captain Hornblower’s heaven with the prospect of pig farming。

Hindus eventually merge with God, the great oblivion. “I am the bubble make me the sea’. Bliss.I like that here there is a conscious search for purpose and meaning.  Governments,the world over, are into greedy acquisition and war.  There’s a certain altruism in that some of the world’s leaders seem seriously interested in exploring space and making life on earth a better place.  I liked that Bill Gates really was interested in developing a superior toilet.  

Charity, grace, character are all words that are lost on the hedonist. Narcissism and ego and self interest prevail so commonly for those who claim their activity is for their family children and community. Justification. Animals mostly take care of their own but what of the other.

 I’ve looked at life as a place between love and fear, doing what seems right as much to avoid fear as out of love.  I can love God or fear God and fear I’m more fearful than loving, I perceive life as hostile. I’m often in defensive mode. 

Jesus taught love and commanded ‘Do not be afraid’. He said ,  “Love God and love your neighbour as yourself”.  It is here I feel the love of God most. Yoganada taught love of God. Devotion. 

I perceive myself in creation. I.believe we are in God and all is God and that God listens and hears. I can talk with God in prayer and listen with God in meditation.  I felt the Ashram with the Christian loudspeaker music was a manifestation of my own inner world.  I have the competing quiet and noise within me. Each has a place. 

At a 12 Step meeting in Delhi I was reminded that ‘we pray for knowledge of the will of God and the power to carry it out’.  Thy will be done not my will. The ancient Jewish text taught all is vanity. I really feel that is true for me.  All ego at times despite the ever present  awareness.  

Even now I’m in a plane with the background noise of flight.  The wonder is what is important. The sacred. I’m in flight. I’m travelling with a whole lot of others from Delhi to Kochi. Laura is beside me.It’s been an all day journey.Two flights with stop over wait in airports and two flights delayed.  We take the extraordinary experience of flight for granted.  I’ve flown more than 50 times,less than a hundred. My first flight as a child.  Buckminster Fuller was interested in the number of miles he’d travelled in his life and how this was greater than all those who’d lived a hundred years before.

I believe in a multi dimensional universe.  I believe that death is a passage and that I will be reunited with family and pets in another world beyond.  I don’t know the purpose of this passage on earth but to date I’ve served as a doctor and had adventure,as well as helping others whereever I am. Playing hide and seek with God. One hand washing another.

 It’s a good day despite the long travel. Begun in an Ashram.  Good food served on Air India.  I have pressure stockings which have helped and taken ibuprofen and Robaxin. I’m reading a couple of novels, one of the Indian Mutiny and the other of the arrest of Gandhi in 1942.  

I’ve even napped and will try that again now.  Good night.  Thank you God.         

       

Yagoda Satsanga Society of India, Ranchi Ashram

Laura and I flew into Ranchi, caught a taxi to the Radisson Bleu Hotel. We checked in just long enough to freshen up and leave our bags. Then we were downstairs catching a taxi to the Ashram.  I’d read visiting hours were 9 am  430 pm. When we arrived the sign said visiting hours were only to 12:30 on Sunday.  Laura informed me it was Sunday. The office was closed but the grounds were open.

We walked about the lovely gardens. It was peaceful and calm. There was lovely fragrance of flowers in the air.  We walked about the paths seeing what we presumed were disciples meditating here and there.

The bird song was lovely but there was a loudspeaker from across the street competing with the car horns sounding outside the compound.  I recognized the Evangelical songs and think a Sunday picnic was taking place.  Normally it’s the Muslim call to prayers that use amplified sound like political rallies. It was such an intrusion in the peace and tranquility of this meditation retreat area. A bit like duelling religions.  

I was amused meditating in the circular shrine at my thoughts. Meditation is said to be listening with God while prayer is talking with God. In meditation I just bring the thoughts back to the breathing or the mantra.I remembered so many mantra’s from Yogananda, coupled them with the Lord’s Prayer and 12 step prayers till my Monkey mind settled and I felt as well as heard the quiet despite the external loud speaker, bird song and car horns. Laura sat in contemplation as well. We’d both removed our shoes.  

After a while of silence we got up and walked over to the main building, what might be called a chapel. There a lovely lady told me I had to sit on the men’s side but that Laura could stay on this Lady’s side.

So there I was thinking of the Serenity prayer and focusing at first with annoyance on the church loudspeaker and motorcycle horns. All I needed to do was go deeper. I did and the outside world backed off.  Then I sat on the women’s side unaware of separation here.  I figured that reflected my non binary tendency.  Again I meditated for a while. Then some man began speaking loudly outside the chapel calling out commands of some sort. Again I was annoyed and lost the serenity.  Again I went deeper for a while.  Kundalini yoga. Mindfulness. Come Holy Spirit come. My hodgepodge of practice, all the while figuring God appreciated the effort I’d made to be in a holy place of his. 

I rose and Laura rose and we headed out different exits.  Outside the saffron robed leader who had for a moment come in earlier and checked the harmonium was there.  It was his voice! Who was he to be making all that noise. Obviously just a monk.  Dozens were on the lawn going through the exercises Paramahansa had developed for the school. He was calling out directions while the Evangelical loudspeaker competed and car horns blared. 

Here I’d been affronted by his voice. Laura was where the women were separate doing exercises. She found her way back. We walked quietly out of the compound admiring the flowers.

We caught a Tuk Tuk back to the Radisson Bleu Hotel.  I was hungry and we ate fish and chips in the fine hotel restaurant. Laura just had the chips, loving them here.  I was exhausted . We both went to bed early.

I caught a taxi to the Ashram this morning.  It was quiet and serene. I meditated in the garden where Yoganada had held satsangs and taught children.  I walked about some more till the office opened. Then I was allowed to join with others meditating in his room. A very quiet tranquil experience.  Meditation with others is a bit like the harmony of song, yet in this case it’s a harmony of silence. 

After a while of peace and enjoying the tranquility of mind, happy, I got up and bought some books and gifts from the shop. A postage stamp had been made by India in 1977 to commemorateYoganada’s contribution to India and mankind.There were pictures on the wall of the 200 meditation retreats.  I was happy to have come. Outside I caught another Tuk Tuk.  

 Laura was glad I was back and glad we could go early to the airport.  We checked out and now we’re here waiting for our flight back to Delhi, our bag checked through to Kochi in Kerala. We arrive there tonight at 9.  She’s had noodles and I’ve had chicken biryanis.  I’m drinking delicious capucinno.  It’s peaceful.

India - leaving Delhi

We’ve been in India for a week now. We’ve stayed at the Pullman Aerocity and done two tours. One was to the Taj Muhal and the Agra Fort, then the next was a tour of Delhi with the highlight for me being the Iron Pillar, lunch at Laseez Affairs, the Delhi well, and finally the rickshaw ride through Old Delhi Bazaar.
 I’ve spent the last five days at a most remarkable International Society of Addiction Medicine conference with the greatest speakers from around the world. I learned so much and was present for the celebration of the founder, Dr. Nady el Guebaly.  I had the pleasure of meeting him in youth and hearing his wisdom. Everything he told me then was true though it would take years to fully appreciate the genius of his early insights.  I look back now and have had the benefit of two mentors who received and well deserved, the Order of Canada, Dr. Nady el Guebaly in Psychiatry and Dr. Jack Hildes in Community Medicine.
In the late 1980’s, I was in Bombay for a couple of months, rewarding myself with a trip there after I’d completed my psychiatry residency.I’d begun a dual speciality in Community Medicine and Psychiatry and only completed 2 years of Community Medicine and Public Health. The irony is I did a year of Surgical residency before doing family practice, rural medicine and returning to specialize in Psychiatry. My life path wasn’t a straight line.  Being here after 30 plus years of life and medicalpractice I’ve found myself reflecting on this particularjourney I’ve taken.
Were I to do it again I’d be more respectful of my parents whose love and wisdom have only become known with time and comparison. When we are young we think others are experiencing what we are and now I know the depth of my mother’s love and concern and the genius , love and discipline of my father. My brother was such a good man, so dutiful, fun and willing to sacrifice so much for the love of family.  I took family for granted too much.  I was so young when I thought I was so old.
I wished I’d been more kind to my former partners. I now know that I thought others should change but nothing like 25 days sailing solo through winter storms in the north Pacific brings home the problem was me and not them. I wish I’d been more loving but mostly more kind, less harsh with my words, less judgemental and more forgiving. They are and were such beautiful people and I was so immature.
I laughed sharing with someone here how proud I was to be an ‘intellectual’ as a young academic.  Apparently I had a very high IQ but while that aided me in getting A’s in almost all my examinations it was in the area of emotional IQ I needed development. India is a motherland.  I grew up in a patriarchal culture. Feminism is in Canada just an abortive strain of patriarchy with tails wanting to be heads, a tom boy mockery. My Buddhist professor friend, Aim, now a mother, loves International Feminism and knows it to be a movement of mothers and women and family and not just angry adolescents imitating men.
The low testosterone in the west reflects the decline of real patriarchy in the same way for playboy adolescent men rather than the mature men my father and brother were. India is a land of family and all the men I speak to include their wives and children and mothers and father’s in their discussion.
In the west, the east was viewed as a spiritual monastic destination. The Buddha with eyes turned inward appealled to the increasing alienation of youth whereas the eyes of the Hindu statues always were open and looking out to family and society.  Trungpa, the great Buddhist leader said the west had trouble with spirituality because of their ‘monkey minds’ only being able to experience ‘spiritual consumerism’.
At a 12 step meeting here I heard again the message that ‘god works through people’. Addiction is alienation and recovery is participation.  Creativity and positivity join us with our friends and family, destruction and negativity separate us. In my work I’m so commonly with young adults experiencing nihilism , young men living in the basements of their parents home addicted to screens, and unable to move out to caring for others. The journey Anna Freud described from Narcissism to Altruism is stymied in our society.
I’m always feeling like I’m a much younger person looking out of the eyes of this older person with thinning hair, wrinkles, back and joint aches.
I see less ageism here. I love the veneration of the elders in the east, the essence of spirituality, the humility and service. I loved watching the brilliant young doctors I met here deferring to old farts like me and being gentle with the aging leaders from their universities and communities.
I love the cows. A taxi driver confirmed that in the cycle of reincarnation that any cow could be a grandparents choosing this as the last step before enlightenment. The Chinese have long said they’d like to be reincarnated as a privileged american pet. Here the cow is venerated as the elder and our tour guide, a Jain, told us that increasingly they are finding new medicines to improve immunology from, of all things, cow piss.  Personally I love the Lassie yoghurt drinks here and the yoghurt itself is the best I’ve ever tasted.
In the Bible in John, it says ‘in the beginning was the word’. String Theory says that the world is an vibrating musical reality. It’s a symphony and I’ve always thought I was the Kazoo.  There’s a need for every instrument and with the greatest of conductors we’ve heard chainsaw and Harley motor sounds incorporated into magical symphonies of sound.  Metal and flute and violin have all coupled with the rhythm section. Here the tabla and sitar sound so beautiful together. I listened to the Sharma’s, a protege boy and girl,  that played for the ISAM gala and was reminded of all the years I listened to Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. Last night we listened to uptown Jazz at our hotel, this girl singing a favourite Nora Jones tune with a great jazz quartet backing her up. I remember too sitting with joy in my heart listenng to Ravi Shankar and his other daughter, the sitar protege.
When I was in Bombay before, I loved that so much music was spiritual. This is such a contrast to modern western music which has a recurring theme of getting drunk or drugged and having strange sex.  I am thankful for classical music channels where I can find the glory of Bach and Handel and the profundity of Mozart.  I remember loving flying into Tel Aviv and hearing Leonard Cohen in the taxi. His Hallelujah song now compete with the brashness of addiction propaganda.  It’s uplifting to me and here there’s the Ballywood love songs reminiscent of the Amercian 50’s big cast musicals and this other deeper more quiet spiritual theme.
I read the edicts of Ashoka at the National Museum of India calling for mutual respect of others, their beliefs and ideas. Mutual respect doesn’t mean we agree but it’s so at contrast to the western university mob thugs like Antifida, the Brownshirts of our day, shouting down any opposing view. I loved Spearker’s Corner in London where anyone could get a soap box. There’s a need for that today. Get these intellectual and spiritual bullies and put them in one place where they can shout and push but lets the rest of us live and let live.
Facebook may yet teach us manners.  Here the manners are overall still in tact. However that day to day, person and person appreciation of space and tolerance of others may explain why there are these huge break outs of demonstrations with everyone joining in. The well behaved unconsciously see this as a chance to let the wild out. I saw that years back in Bombay where a group suddenly was ignited and it was a bit of time before things settled again.  It is also a land of constant festival.
I’m enjoying meditation. I most enjoyed talking about reality and neurotransmitters, dopamine and yoga with Dr. Raju Hajela.  He and his wife were hiking in the mountains and he shared over dinner their wondrous experiences of meditating in old caves where hermits had gone five thousand years ago.  Throughout history there are those who go to the mountain and return. The Bodhi tree is such a symbol too. I enjoyed visiting monasteries in Turkey and Israel and Greece, the old desert father places, feeling the gentleness that permeates the space.
We are now off to Ranchi where the Yagoda Satsanga Sakha Math Ranchi Ashram is. This is where Paramahansa Yogananda first taught meditation and heard his call to come to America.  He felt that Jesus Christ was leading him. St. Augustine taught mantra or affirmation meditation and breathing and mindfulness.
Dr. Hamelin and discussed Dr. Herbert Benson’s research on Mahareshi’s mantra and how the words could be any, Benson choosing ‘one’ for his research on the physiological benefits of meditation.  I associate meditation throughout my university and medical school years with the godliness I knew then and the academic achievement. When I proceeded to study psychoanlytic psychiatry I unfortunately met atheists who told me I couldn’t do both.  Indeed my psychiatrist teacher at the time told me meditayion damaged the mind!
Thankfuly I met better and wiser psychiatrists in later years but at the time I was encouraged By my teachers to see marijuana , alcohol and sex as superior. It wasn’t like I was one to argue but the detour in my life took a while to sort out and cost a lot for myself and those around me. It’s actually considered in ‘tantric yoga’ discussion. To Australians it might be called a spiritual walkabout.
 Thanks to my Christian mentors like Dr. Willi and Dr. Philip And the orthodox jewish psychologist Dr. Sam I moved beyond Sex and drugs and rock and roll to a new path that was in so many ways like my former trajectory.  The spirituality of imperfection comes to mind.
Now here I am ready to pay homage to another great source of the best in my life. I’ve so enjoyed going to the Israel and Rome and Athens and Capadoecia and Istanbul/Constantinople, and St. Patrick’s Ireland and the Coptic churches and monasteries of Ethiopia. I’ve loved the Catholic Cathedrals and Orthodox cathedrals of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
India brings all this spiritual travel to mind and helps me remember we are all just passing through. So be kind.