When I first experienced … this movie at the Gothenburg Film Festival 1994, I was truly amazed. Never before – or since – have I had such an over-all, explain-it-all feeling after a show. Ron Fricke has made a documentary about the World today for a day, starting at dawn with monkeys in hot springs in Japan, and the morning rituals of various religions. This is followed by the awakening of the human race, both in the big cities and in the country side. Brilliantly edited, the film follows every aspect of human daily life combined with the general changes of the planet itself and all the ecological systems upon it. The over-all glue of the story are the various religious rituals. The only time giver, except for the turning of the sun, are the praying times and times of worship … around the globe. The Gaia idea (that the Earth is a whole being, a unit, a living organism) is detectable in the film, both in the way all the different cultures shown are found to be very similar to one another, and in the way the speeded-up people at side walks and zebra crossings look very much like the stream of blood in the veins of an organism.
Source: jcnteach from Gothenburg, Sweden
(Photograph: bigfoto.com)
O Conch,
You form of perfection
Who could imitate you?
Only inside us
There is an echo
Of that spiral form
Sounding forth that OM,
Winding through our lives
In this unwitting world
Which has forgotten
That note of quietude
Or the power of your song
Born in the dawn of creation when
Lord Siva
Gently pushed His Shakti forth
And in Her whirling dance
The Innocence was formed
On your long winding note.
We now can hear again
That pure untempered sound.
And can imagine how
When Durga raised you to Her lips
And blew divine breath through you
What dismay you brought Her foes then
In that swelling roar of sound.
Having no hollow within themselves
They could not bear it.
And now we widen chambers in our hearts
In stillness to receive and send
Your golden caul of sound
Throughout the universe
At perfect pitch of praise.
LV
(Photograph: lucylearns.com)
We’ve all heard about the environmental disaster that is gripping the world and bringing it to its knees. But what about that other disaster that is taking place inside us in that mysterious, unquantifiable, inner environment – our spirit, our consciousness?
Because for every poisoned sea and ripped down forest around us in this world, there is a spiritual equivalent here within us, in this land of our imagination. Think about it – what happened to that innocent little creature you were when you were born, who seemed to know itself, that was happy in the moment? How has it changed? Haven’t our inner worlds transformed in parallel with the world around us? Who amongst us is still happy? Who amongst us even believes in the simple happiness of just being alive?
And what about these thoughts that choke up our inner skies as surely as any CO2-emitting chimney – that harangue us endlessly with guilt trips, anger, self-glory, alternating with self-loathing and a string of endless and insatiable desires? What about these lusts that break our societies and our families apart, and in the process our children’s hearts until, like us, they too are filled up with yet more pain and insecurity?
We can see the world around us as it suffers, we hear about the flora and fauna that are being destroyed in our wake and we are spurred on to try to curb our wanton consumption of life in the hope that the cycle can be reversed. But how can we hope to bring a balm of peace to this world when our hearts are swamped in toxins, our guts have been mined with unfillable pits of greed, our inner skies are choked by the smoking factories of our mind and our innocent desires are fanned into fierce fires that consume the brushwood of our morality?
Yes, let’s try to save the world! But as we do, let us remember what we are saving this world from. We are saving this world from ourselves, nothing more. We are saving the world from what we have become.
And if we really want to make a difference, then the struggle must be a twofold struggle – both an outer and an inner one. A simultaneous battle to save the animals of the Brazilian rainforests and also the bare-footed angels that live in our hearts. We’re fighting the Environmental disaster but we should not forget about the IN-vironmental disaster that is the root of all our present ills.
Jeremy Clancy
(Photograph: webshots)
Editor: Jeremy would like to start an email action group on this topic. If you would like to join the group, please write to me at [email protected], and I will send your message to Jeremy.
The reason for dreams is that when you are sleeping your attention moves either to the supra-conscious side or to the subconscious side. Your attention starts moving and then you start seeing things which are connected with your subconscious or your collective subconscious…. You may go into your supra-conscious side where you see your future and all these things.
Bu the reason why you get your dreams actually is that the unconscious pushes within you, or we can say the Kundalini or your Atma is trying to guide you to the right path. And how does it guide you to the right path, is through dreams.
But these are misunderstood. How are you guided by these dreams? Understand these dreams, because you are so confused.
First you go deep into yourself and you touch the unconscious, sushupti. But from there, you come out. And then when you are coming out, you touch your subconscious or maybe the supra-conscious. So whatever anabhuti [feeling] you had or whatever experience you had of the depth of the sushupti gets confused. And you don’t know what you dreamt and you don’t understand and you forget it.
But those who are realised souls, go to their sushupti and see exactly what they have to know. Like many people in Bombay when I came, they didn’t know I was coming, but they were at the airport because they got the dream.
So at the sushupti level, at the deep level, you get the communication with God if you know how to go in and come out fully aware. But if you get confused with supra-conscious or subconscious areas … your chitta [attention] is not so clearcut. Then there can be a big confusion.
Shri Mataji, 1983