AND GOD CREATED . . .

AND GOD CREATED . . .

There is a small black ball, the size of the ball you use for playing the game of squash-rackets. But this ball is unusual. It is extremely heavy and of a density beyond imagination. No one can lift it as it is far heavier than the Earth! It is, infact, as heavy as the universe !! Actually it IS the universe !!! It is, nodoubt, getting confusing. Some explanation is needed. Let me explain.

Now, if you see the sketch of our
solar system you will notice the vast spaces between tiny orbiting masses. The fact is that the universe has very little mass and limitless spaces. It reminds me of the huge inflated big potato chips packets with a few chips and lots of air !

Now the Creater( there has to be one as Einstein said) removes ALL spaces between the masses and there is now one huge mass. It is still too big though the 'light years' distances are now gone.

Now, this mass is composed of (even a child knows this today)
ATOMS. And there are vast spaces
between atoms too. The Creator
removes these spaces also. Now the size is really small. But the Creator is still at work !.

The fact is that the atom is a mini
universe in itself. (Remember the
wisdom of ancient India's Sages - यथ पिन्डम तथ ब्रह्मान्डम - that is, as is the universe so is the atom ). Read this:

"Atoms are composed of particles
called protons , electrons and
neutrons . Protons carry a positive
electrical charge, electrons carry a
negative electrical charge and
neutrons carry no electrical charge at all. The protons and neutrons cluster together in the central part of the atom, called the nucleus (like our Sun), and the electrons 'orbit' the nucleus (like the planets of our Solar system)."

Now the creator removes all the
spaces inside each atom also! What now remains is like the black squash- racket ball. GOD can do this and has been doing this, in CYCLES, timelessly. So the ball is now ready for a divine 'game' !

And then this ball explodes . . ( yes
that is the word). And its fragments
keep moving in all directions. . .
keeps expanding . . . Creating
spaces. That is all about the BIG
BANG THEORY and the expanding
universe. (In a NON-TECHNICAL
language). The rest, as they say, is history !

A FRIEND OF THE POOR

Deep in the Himalayas, in India, there is a picture-postcard town named
Almora.

It has a settlement on both sides of the ridge of a mildly curving five thousand feet high hill which runs in a somewhat east- west
direction.There are villages here and there in the misty valleys down below.

Once upon a time, in one of these villages down there,lived a poor lanky
boy. He was then in his early teens. This was a good hundred years ago,
in the British colonial period. Even in the town of Almora, then, medical
facilities were limited even though the town was very 'modern' for that period

because of the long years of dedication of one great British officer named Sir Henry Ramsay(1816-1893) Outside the town no medical facilities exsisted.

And so it came to pass that when the boy's old mother fell seriously ill, there was no way she
could be helped. He saw his only hope, high up in the sprawling town far above the village. He set out to climb the narrow long meandering track and arrived in the town in the misty morning. There were many doctors
in the town but none was willing to come with him to the village for he had little
money to pay for their services.

" And so my mother died for lack of medical attention as I stood there watching helplessly. And it was then that I resolved to become a doctor so that I could render free service
to those who had no means to pay."he concluded as he refused to accept more than a token fee from my father
for rendering a first rate personalised medical service to a sick member of our family.

This narrative dates backs to the misty past, in my childhood, when we were in Almora for a brief respite from the raging summer of the dusty planes below.
.
This messiah of the poor was then a very well known and respected man. He was Dr.Thapa M.B.B.S. who dedicated his whole life to the service of the poor as he had resolved in his childhood. He was blessed with a long life and long years of service to the people of Almora. And yet today he is a totally forgotten man, swallowed in the whirlpool of time !!

WHOSE STORY IS THIS ?

His story and history are not synonyms and yet the latter word seems to flow out of the former.

History is indeed a record of the activities of MAN .Women do take centre stage now and again but it it more an exception than otherwise. It is more or  less MAN all the way, It is his story indeed.

You can never recreate the factual history. This is primarily for two reasons. One, the recording of history usually takes place on a subsequent date,sometimes too far into the future and the historian uses his imagination to
reconstruct the events and gives an account of 'what might have happened'. And he records it in a way that people should like and remember him . So the details are not entirely reliable, not always true.

The second reason why actual history is never factually recreated is a motivated one. History is written by the one who wins the war or his successors. It is entirely the conqueror's story.

He writes it the way he wants - he likes to be always seen as the hero of this story and the vanquished one as the villain. Historical FACTS means nothing. The perception of these events as seen by the conqueror's historians means everything.Thus, Since history is written by the one who wins the war, it is half the truth, the other half being the unrecorded 'wrongs' perpetrated by the victor. It has always been so. Had Hitler 

won the second worldwar there would have been no records of genocide of jews or the terror of Gestapo.

History has unfotunately been a chronology of negativity - of wars and conquests, of bloodshed , of deceit and revenge . And sadly this is what is taught to the school going children and this gets implanted on their tender minds. What has a child to learn from this ?

A questiom arises here and it is this : why should a child learn history as it is taught at present. What does he/she learn from the
malovolence of Hitler when the tender mind should have learnt about the compassion of Mahatma Gandhi

and Mother Teresa. Why should the mainstream history not include the works and life of great scientists like Newton, Einstein

and Hawkins , of great mystics who preached and practiced higher values in life. And why should mainstream history be mainly political rather than that of human achievements that bring people together ? Why should history divide the nations ? Why should history breed hatred anongst people ?

Somebody has to answer
these questions . . . .!! It is long overdue.

THE GREAT LOST CIVILIZATIONS

There was a time way back in the hoary past when great civilizations
flourished in the Middle East, in Central America, in INDIA, in Mesopotamia and elsewhere too. These civilizations were very advanced in science and technology but they  disappeared mysteriously all over the world .This could be possibly due to the DELUGE referred to in the mythological lore of many countries. In hindu mythology too there is a mention of a deluge (called PRALAY) a few thousand years back.

We have no records now to know about the level of accomplishments of these civilizations except some very sketchy information. Still, whatever little is left for us to discover is amazing. For example how were the pyramids made ? what machinery was used to lift such enormous blocks of stones and to make perfect massive structures ? And how did the ancient Indians and Babylonians know such accurate details about the universe and about the smallest of particles and their inter relationship - YATH PINDAM TATH BRAMHANDAM ( as in the universe so in the atom ). How did the Mayans possess such amazing knowledge about so many things?

With the ravages of time everything perishes except huge stones and some engravings on stones. For example if our civilization perishes in a Deluge, all the great technology will perish. There will be little left for a future civilization to know anything about us except from the stone ( or, may be, steel) structures left behind. They will, as they  build up a primitive civilization from the scratch, wonder how the Eiffel tower was built. And if by chance they get to see a decaying supersonic aeroplane, they will consider it to be an amazing residential structure of some earlier ancient people !

The problem with modern man is the presumption that we are gradually developing from the APE and that there was never ever an advanced scientific civilization before ours. This presupposition creates a mental block.

Everything in nature moves in waves - sound, electricity, light and other energies they all move in waves(cycles). And so do epochs -the rise and destruction of civilizations. Deluge also comes as a pattern, in cycles. This has been propounded in the ancient hindu philosophy which holds that there is a great deluge after each cycle of time and then destruction takes place.

The world is now in the process of accepting that there were indeed many advanced civilizations in the prehistoric past. Consider this excerpt ( it is from the link given at the bottom ) :

"Ancient knowledge was a lot more refined and developed than we have been taught hitherto. From batteries to planispheres, an assortment of gadgets have been excavated and found. Two notable finds were the Nimrud lens and the famous Antikythera Mechanism. The 3,000 year old Nimrud lens was discovered at the palace of Nimrud, in Iraq. Some experts believe the lens was part of an ancient telescope the Babylonians used, hence their advanced knowledge of astronomy. And the famous Antikythera Mechanism (200 BC.) was created to calculate the movements of the sun, moon and planets to predict celestial events. Unfortunately, we can only
speculate on the ways many of these devices were created, used and why the ancient knowledge pertaining to them disappeared for millennia afterwards."

Who were these awesome people ? Was it an age far superior to ours in all facets of human achievements? How did these civizations totally disappear ? And when ?

These question are infact far more important to us than whether there is water on planet Pluto or oxygen in Jupiter's moons or, for that matter, the ongoing charade for the elusive God (!) particle !!

http://listverse.com/2013/04/12/10-mysteries-that-hint-at-forgotten-advanced-civilizations/

THE FAMOUS ANIMALS

An exceptionally long life or extraordinary courage or out-of-the-world charaterstics result in timeless fame. And When animals become part of some awesome chapter of history they too are remembered for a long time to come. Let us have a look at some animals who achieved timeless fame.

One such animal who walked into the pages of history was CHETAK the
legendary horse of Maharana Pratap,

the great rajput king of Rajputana India. Maharana Pratap refused to become a courtier of the moghul emperor Akbar and remained independent, fighting battles against the mighty Emperor all his life. The name of his beloved horse was CHETAK. This celebrated horse was with him in many bloody battles including the famous battle of Haldighati. The famous hindi poet Shyam Narain Pandey seems to be in his elements as says this about CHETAK in his famous long poem "Haldighati" :

" Run. beech. chaukari. bhar. bhar. ke. CHETAK. ban. gaya. nirala.tha . . / . . rana. pratap. ke. ghore. se. par. gaya. hawa. ko. pala. tha."

( chetak was galloping over the stage of war like a phantom-in-ecstasy . . /. . Even the winds and the elements of nature were in
absolute awe of this awesome horse of Rana Pratap).

We find a European version of Chetak in a horse by the name of MORENGO. He was the famous horse of
Napoleon Bonaparte and this horse was a battle veteran. Here is wikipedia extolling the horse called Marengo :

"Marengo (c. 1793–1831) was the famous war mount of Napoleon I of
France . Named after the Battle of Marengo, through which he carried
his rider safely, Marengo was imported to France from Egypt in 1799 as a 6-year-old. The grey Arabian was probably bred at the
famous El Naseri Stud. Although small (only 14.1 hands.) he was a reliable, steady, and courageous
mount. Marengo was wounded eight times in his career, and carried the
Emperor in the Battle of Austerlitz, Battle ofJena-Auerstedt , Battle of
Wagram , and Battle of
Waterloo . He also was
frequently used in the 80 mile gallops from Valladolid to Burgos, which he often completed in 5 hours."

Next we turn to the foothills of the beautiful himalayas in the uttarakhand region in
India.Here there is a place called Kaladhungi. It is some miles from the famous hill-station of Nainital, in the plains below. Kaladhungi is associated with the famous tiger hunter Jim Corbet. When we arrive at the place where he used to live, we see a well maintained enclosure having two graves. These are the graves of his two beloved dogs - ROBIN(he) & ROSINA(she).The owner of these hunting dogs was a legend called JIM CORBETT. The exploits
of ROBIN & ROSINA in his accounts of tiger-hunts endear them to the readers. If you have not read his book "The man eating leopard of
Rudraprayag"  you have missed masterpiece of tiger-hunt stories.
(google search Jim Corbett to know more about this legend of kumaon hills.). These celebrity dogs of the
celebrity hunter have a permanent place in the pages of history.

Then we have the grand old tortoise of India, a huge one. He was called ADWAITA ! He lived in Alipur zoological garden
Kolikata (Calcutta) and lived upto the age of 256 years !!

Wikipedia records thus about Adwaita the tortoise:

"Adwaita (c. 1750 – 23 March 2006) was a male Aldabra giant tortoise in
the Alipore Zoological Gardens of Kolkata (Calcutta), India . He was amongst the longest-living animals in the world.
Historical records show he was a pet of General Robert Clive of the British
East India Company, and had spent several years in
his sprawling estate before he was brought to the zoo. It is said that the
Aldabra tortoise was a gift to Clive from the British
seafarers who had captured the tortoise."

Next we pick up a bird - a parrot. Parrots are perhaps the only birds that talks like humans. They remember and repeat what is said in their
presence. we have a parrot in England who is master of dirty phrases. He is still alive, living a long life. His name is charlie the Macaw.

"Charlie (1899 - present) is a crotchety old blue macaw that may have already lived through three
centuries and is still going
strong. While it’s impossible to know
the exact date he was born, estimates put it around the very end
of the 19th century, and even if those estimates are off by a few decades,
he has still lasted a lot longer than the average 50 year life span of normal
macaws. His current owner claims he was a favorite pet of Winston
Churchill’s, who supposedly acquired Charlie in 1937 after the macaw had already
managed to outlive two previous owners. While the Churchill claim is
hotly debated, what is certain is that whoever did own Charlie during World
War II taught him to say some very dirty phrases, mostly about Hitler and the Nazis !"
(A macaw is a long tailed colourful parrot of the new world - the American continents.)

What we have next is an army officer - a
Sergeant . In 1918, his exploits were front page news in every major
newspaper in the United States. He was known as Sergeant Stubby. He was
wounded on several occasions during the conflict. And as time rolled on he became a celebrity.
He was a DOG - the only dog in history to be OFFICIALLY  given an army rank !!

And finally a most famous mule who never actually existed - "Fransis the
talking mule". He was the hero of a novel by David stern. He acted in several films too - a number of very funny Hollywood films were made in
the 1950s with the mule as the hero !!

For contacting this mule use the link below  :

http://horsefame.tripod.com/francis.html

THE SAINT FROM HIMALAYAS

He had attempted some competitive examinations but could not succeed in getting a job so far. PC was worried and getting disheartened. He had an excellent academic career but no job in sight.

He was now waiting for the results of the PCS examination, a coveted government service in those days. He had not much hope. The vacancies were few and contenders in thousands.

This was the pre-independence forties of India in the British Raj. Good jobs were very few. In the PCS, one started the career as deputy collector, a position of a good salary, much status and power in pre-independence days.

" Go to NeemKaroliBaba," a friend suggested, " He may help you know your future. He is a Trikaldarshi (it means one who knows the past, the present and the future) ."

This was in Nainital, a lake town nestled in the Himalayas. Neem Karoli baba was a revered saint. His ashram, then, was at a walking distance from the town in Hanumangarhi (He established his famous KAINCHI ashram on Nainital-Almora road subsequently).

PC was removing his shoes to enter the hall where people were seated on a carpet before the saint when Neemkaroli baba noticed him.

" Aao deputy collector saheb aao ( come in, our deputy collector )." accosted the baba affectionately.

He came in, touched baba's feet and sat down before the baba in the crowd of bhaktas (devotees).

" Baba, will I be able to get any job ?" he asked, "I have another examination coming up the next month.I am losing hope now."

" No more exams." baba chided him affectionately, "you are already a deputy collector now."

The results of PCS exam. were published in the newspapers after a few days and he had been selected !

This is just one of the countless stories that surround this wonder saint of Himalayas. For a long time he lived in Nainital and then moved on to Kainchi, a few miles from Nainital. He was revered as the incarnation of the hindu God Hanuman in his life time. My maternal grand-father was a regular visitor at his ashram and from him in my childhood I came to know about this holy man who shunned limelight and talked little unlike the institution-builder saints of today who seek out the media and like to be constantly photographed. My grandfather had personal experience of awesome divine powers of this saint.

Here is a link to know more about him:

http://www.dlshq.org/saints/neemkaroli.htm

THE GREAT INVENTORS !

THE GREAT INVENTORS  !!

we are in the habit of taking everything for granted. As darkness descends, as the Sun sets, we just switch on the lights. we turn on the tap when we need water in our houses . we have gas to cook our meals - we do not have to go into the forest to get firewood for kitchen as our ancestors did in the past. We also do not go out  searching of food everyday. Our food is available ,whenever needed - both cooked and uncooked - for a payment.They are so many  comforts in day to day living now. It was not like this always.

Yes ! Many things that we take for granted in our daily life now, were never there until the recent past. Come to think of it, less than two centuries back there was no electricity (fan, electric light, heater,cooler ACs- as you keep reflecting, the list keeps growing longer and longer), no railways, no cars or motorised vehicles, no
telephone,no radio,noT.V. ,no music recordings of any kind, no cinema, no air travel and not even the ubiquitious bicycle!! Most of these things are in general use for less than a hundred years. The internet came just the other day. There was a time when sunset meant darkness -end of major activities. Then dim Oil lamps provided a ghost of a light in the dark streets of big cities. Elsewhere it was total darkness. Homes were dimly lit with flickering candles, lanterns or oil lamps.

Even a person of ordinary means today possesses things a king of the olden days could not have dreamt of ! Emperors would have given away a fortune to get a working television network or a train service or,for that matter, even a tape recorder.

And yet (think of it) we never feel grateful to those very few magnificent men and women who brought about this qualitative change in the human race. They are all but forgotten ! Their birth anniversaries pass unnoticed.

To borrow from Winston Churchill's once famous remarks, said in another context, '' never have
so many (read- 'billions') owed so much to so few". The enormousness of the human civilization's debt to these few inventors becomes apparent when you are reminded that
once upon a time there was no WHEEL !!