Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 18, 2009
Did you have mentors or teachers on your quest?
I have met people who are very evolved, pure souls, almost on the verge of sainthood. Then it was up to me to see how they enrich me, how I would learn from them.
You were blessed enough to meet them?
Everybody can be blessed. But you have to close your intellect, stop playing games and open your heart.
At first you were mostly in the intellect?
Definitely. I was sent to Aligarh to study science. From there I changed and went into art, painting. Painting is more personal though. So I found that film is an interesting medium of change and transformation
Today, the things you are known for like painting, movies, design etc. are into those realms of spirituality but you started with advertising and Air India — how did that happen?
When I went to Calcutta to study and work, I did not want to go into a pure commercial job. I thought advertising would be near art and not pure commerce. Many people like me, artists at heart, end up in advertising.
I could have easily become a copywriter or a visualizer. And this is what you call to be blessed. Had I become those things, my art would have been sucked into it. So instead, I dealt with clients and got saved.
Then I went to Air India, where I was looking after advertising. There, I found my own space. I was looking at a broader picture, how to promote India, the Indian image abroad, buying art and much more.
In the way your life unfolded, has there been something like destiny?
I definitely think destiny is there. Sometimes things go wrong and you really have no idea why. And they can’t ever go right.
I will give you an example of something that has taken place over the last twenty years.
When I was with Air India, I thought of promoting Kashmir as a destination. One of the ideas was to make a film, which I finally started in 1986, with the ambition of creating a global cinema out of India. We started shooting in 1989 with great fanfare and completed 30% of the shooting. Since then, there have been problems in the Valley and I have been waiting for better days to come.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 17, 2009
Is it hard to remain an optimist?
No, I am full of optimism. I found an answer in Sufism, as a way to sensitize people, soften them, without complaining. It is one area where the oppressor and the oppressed can both meet. I have seen it happen in front of my eyes, and somehow it is prophetic.
The Sufis have an interesting way of addressing these issues because they don’t claim anything. The moment you create a group, you want to have followers, you want to possess things, which creates problems. It is therefore better to be like the wind. Something just comes, touches, obliges without expecting any return. That is the way of the Sufi. They are nobody.
Sufism in their sense is about acquiring all the knowledge needed to understand society. And then transcending it, dissolving, seeing that everybody is the same. For them there is no such thing as being a Hindu, a Bahai, a Muslim and so on. That is why you find people of all backgrounds going to them.
Of all approaches, why have you felt closest to Sufism?
I felt they had a lot of inherent sense of freedom and love. That was evident in their poetry. Poetry as I said is the mother art, the ultimate form of spiritual expression. These people took the way of the poem to touch people. They didn’t look at it as touching others. They did it as if they were touching themselves. In the process, the side effect was that they would unify and melt people. Ultimately the whole purpose of life is to soften. You cannot afford to harden any stance. People have to feel that they are tender. That they are nobody. The moment you start putting people on a pedestal… Sufism has no form of sycophancy. Poets are always away from the center of power. Power tries to approach them but they fade away. They cannot be grasped. That is why you find people who are vulnerable and powerless, getting empowered by their idea, their thought, their being.
Even those long gone have left behind a concept of the dignity of the poor. That is a very powerful concept. It cuts across everything.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 16, 2009
A carpenter needs wood, a painter needs a brush and colors. Even from a human point of view, words drive people. Structured concepts are embedded in us and drive us. They are poetic concepts. Because if the word is structured in a rhythmic form, it can enter our mind space with a message. That is why the big prophets are people of the word, wording their message in a way that could connect with the human race. Out of those words, a lot of beauty arose. The beauty of architecture, calligraphy, sound, form. Ultimately human beings are receptacles of beauty. That is where the finer aspect of spirituality comes. To see that beauty coming out of truth. Out of a source which is pure, primordial. It’s your own journey. As an artist, as a communicator, you try to put simple things into shape.
How did that quest of yours start?
Of all things, I would say that pain and loss are very important factors in triggering this journey. For me, it was the pain of seeing culture crumbling in Lucknow and in my village.
Also, my father had a very humanistic approach to life. Your parents shape your mind in some strange way. But ultimately you have to decide how to go forward.
Was it a religious home?
My mother was religious but not my father. He was a humanist.
Did he break away from his family traditions?
He was very young when his parents died. He grew up in Scotland and became a Communist, before transforming into a humanist. He then came to India in 1935 and tried to enter politics. His ideas were ahead of his time and stayed in people’s mind. He was anti-communal. He focused on development, advocating family planning, or hydel-power. He felt that audiovisual education was very important and spread teaching through sound. He was using films as a means to an end, which is for a 25 years’ old boy in 1935 quite ahead of its time. He was an idealist and didn’t get much out of politics. He was a free man. I saw him suffer that way.
Did he become a bitter man?
He was not frustrated but very upset.
So what did you mean by pain?
Lucknow is a very important part of the country. Colonial politics were played at their finest and we were a victim of that. After 1857, culture was very much decimated and I tried to document it. But it has been very difficult to preserve it all. Things go wrong much faster than they would ever go right.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 14, 2009
You said it’s first a local quest which can then become universal?
It can be very local and grassroots. You could be in a village, applying yourself to certain problems and factors within that little society. And at the same time you can see the bigger picture.
Seeing the bigger picture is actually an important aspect of spirituality. Prophets are those who have no personal agenda. They have a larger human agenda.
Are there prophets today?
If you are weightless, you are prophetic. If you have no demand from the world, and have only to give to the world, then you can be prophetic.
Of course, who knows who is the ultimate prophet… but at least there are some pure people.
Have you met some?
Every day you meet them in the form of carpenters, crafts people, people who work with their hands. When you work with your hands, you are using a different soul. Or rather, you are using your soul for something devoid of any immediate gain. You are applying sensitivity to a medium. Spirituality could mean empowering them, protecting their vulnerability. Because in fact some of them are very vulnerable. We have the intelligence so we can protect them.
This is one of the reasons you got involved into fashion, isn’t it?
Definitely. Though as very often, your original motivation gets defeated. You get involved into something with a particular objective and something very different happens. We started with the idea of empowering those people and enabling them to stay in their villages without having to come to the big cities. Because I feel that they lose everything when they move. They lose more than what they gain. I thought craft was a way of empowering them, so they can stay where they are.
But sometimes you feel you are fighting a lost cause. And so many of them ended up in Delhi, doing their work here. The whole purpose was defeated.
Regardless, there is a lot of spirituality in art, crafts, painting, poetry. Poetry to me is the mother art. Because when you write poetry you do not need anything. Just a paper and a pencil. Your flow from yourself to the world is unlimited. It doesn’t need anything but a state of mind.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 11, 2009
Good morning friends. In this world, there is no great as God. God is a great concept of man to cope up with life. God handles each and everyone of us in His way. We sometimes feel bad as we think that God is forgetting us. It’s not true. I just remember one quotes and I seriously believe in it … “Let not have fear to face the life, as Lord God is just around to walk with us, to guide us where we least expected.” The article I read is a good thing to read and I would like to share it with you.
What does spirituality mean to you?
It is a deep inner quest, which somehow connects with my concerns for life, my concerns about society, the conditions in which I was born.
Also, as you can see a certain kind of ugliness around and certain imbalances, you try to find answers.
You do it without an agenda, without it being part of your job. You do it as your own inner journey. You do it to connect to human beings. You may do it on a very small local scale and then expand it to a universal one.
You may find a common thread in this quest. Underlying its whole description is love, universal love. A love that makes you want to see everything in its pure form. You want to negate all the ugliness around. That is what I feel spirituality is all about.It manifests itself in a lot of finer human expressions. Art is avery important factor in it. It can express your very base feelings and desires. It can also be the ultimate expression of spirituality through poetry, music, painting, cinema.
So it is all about finding your own way to understand spirituality, your own way to express it.
Precisely, how did you find your own way?
I don’t have any great claims of being spiritual. But I feel it is a very important factor in human life. And it should be celebrated as the one strong way to peace.
At least I can see and recognize those people who have reached it. That quality, every human being has – to recognize spirituality in its pure form. The only ones who don’t have it are those who have a very strong intellect and a very strong ego. They can’t see spirituality, they always run it down. They use their intellect to survive, to cut people down, to move forward and all sorts of other things.
It is the human race’s tragedy: this ambitious mind trying to find a place of superiority for itself. That is a real danger to the human race. But we are in it, we can’t avoid it, we have to suffer through it.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 6, 2009
Awareness of the true self is beyond the mediation of conventional sensory modalities and the dichotomy of knower and knowledge. There is nothing like ignorance because ignorance also is a manifestation of awareness. Awareness itself manifests as knowledge or ignorance. Both are just states.
Consciousness exists as both personalized and impersonalized states. Impersonalized consciousness is supra-sensory. It just exists and does not need a cognitive entity as a medium to be aware of itself. It does not have any time space definitions because these are for the finite. The Infinite Unmanifest has the privilege of manifesting as the finite. But the finite has severe limitations in perceiving the Infinite. Its identity as a finite entity is based on amnesia of its infiniteness.
Creation is the dream of consciousness. There is no logic to this dream. Realization is when consciousness awakes from its own dream. Till consciousness is in a dream state, illusion persists. The brain is a programme for affecting the dream of consciousness. Myriad forms of creation exist merely as functions of this cognitive programme.
Matter or form owes its existence to this programme of deception. This programme also has software that ensures total belief in the illusion that it creates. Any attempt to understand the self – as just a manifestation of the formless – is futile in the dream state. The entity that endeavors to do so is also part of that dream. Therefore liberation is not of a person but from the person. Liberation is deliverance from the finite and its futile attempts to comprehend the infinite. It is when the infinite wakes up from the dream of being finite – cognition that can recognize itself as absolute and not resort to duality to assert itself. -The Times of India
The writer is a consultant neurosurgeon. Email: deepakranade@hotmail.com
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 3, 2009
Good morning friends. Liberation is freedom. Yes this is true. It’s the kind of action of freeing from control or domination. Whatever we want to do, we can do it as we have a freedom for ourselves.
Form is a wave perceived by the ocean of consciousness in an attempt to understand its own formlessness. This duality is imagined and the sense of am-ness crystallizes as a discrete entity that thrives on other forms or cognizing entities to assert its own form.
It seeks cognizance from other forms to recognize its own transient form. What is eternal is the formlessness that is the precursor of form.
Form is obsessed with tangibility. The sense organs are mere instruments to reinforce this belief in form as the true self. The form continues to believe it is a discrete independent entity. It has total conviction in these deceptive sensory modalities of perception.
Relativity is based on the fact that perception changes as the observer’s state changes. One form cannot understand the precise nature of another form. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle also underlines the shortcomings of our sensory perceptive modalities, where the senses cannot determine the precise position and velocity of a particle simultaneously.
Sensory modalities can never fathom formlessness. Formlessness transcends the senses. When form has to decipher the formless it must first abandon the conviction of its own form. The brain has various centers which serve as destinations for perceptive inputs. It therefore has a strong discriminatory ability to separate the subject from the object. This discrimination is mediated via the sense organs and is the most powerful tool for effecting duality. Comprehension is totally a derivative of the sense organs.
There are many ‘silent areas’ in the brain whose exact function is not known. These areas could be mediating supra-sensory cognition, cognition that is not based on a subject-object dichotomy, cognition that uses itself to recognize itself.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: December 1, 2009
Swami Niralambananda pointed out the attitude behind the same actions of different individuals. He clarified that the words uttered, revealed the contents of the heart and determined the purity of the mind. The sannyasins had a detached outlook to things as they are clearly aware of the fact that they were not the body and that they extended much beyond the physical frame. They identified themselves with the all pervading atman.
So a delicacy or a simple food, silk robe or jute clothing, a cushioned bed or the bare floor hardly made any difference to them. Had they to savor sweetmeat they were ready to partake of the alms collected the next day wholeheartedly. Had they to adorn silk clothes they were more than ready to switch to rags or simple clothing if situation demanded, without a flinch.
They resorted to sleeping on the bare floor without the slightest hesitation even if they had slept on comfortable beds. In their attitude they were completely detached unlike the ordinary people who clung to comforts. Though they seemed to be quite their minds were always alert.
The Swami explained further to the king that the sannyasins were totally dedicated for selfless service and if there was a crisis to give up their life for a cause, the king would then come to know of their virtues, as they were totally detached from their body.
The Swami thus concluded saying that mere external actions fail to determine the depth of the renunciates’ deeds. - OneIndia
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: November 30, 2009
Good morning friends. If you were to be asked, which one you give weight to the Attitude or Appearance. With the article I read it explains it well. Let me share it with you.
The attitude behind an action holds good than the appearance projected by it.
Once the diwans and the ministers informed Raja Singh Bahadhur of Bihar, that the Sannyasins (renunciates) of the Anandapuri ashram indulged in comforts like savouring on sweet meats and Kheer and spent their time sleeping without engaging any form of spiritual practices. The king summoned the Mahant of the ashram, Swami Niralambananda and demanded an explanation regarding the allegement against the sannyasins. Swami Nirambalanda invited the king to the ashram the next day and determine for himself. He further told the king that he would wake him up at three o’clock the next day to set out on the mission.
The Swami awakened the king at three o’clock the next morning and asked the king’s attendant to follow them with a pot of water. He first led the king to the homes of the diwans and the ministers. As instructed by him, the attendant sprinkled a little water from the pot on the ministers’ and the diwans’ face. Startled at being woken up suddenly from their sound sleep, they unconsciously uttered a stream of foul words. Next the Swami led the king to the stable and the water was sprinkled on the grooms, they woke up uttering, ‘Sala’, ‘Badmash’ etc. The Swami then took the king to the ashram and the water was sprinkled on the sleeping sannyasins. The sannyasins woke up uttering the names of God.
Posted by: dhirendra08 on: November 28, 2009
Good morning friends. Do you believe that God is everywhere, were you least expected Him. Yes it is! We can find God anywhere. Actually we don’t have to find Him. He is just beside you every time you needed Him. God is even in nature too. The article I read is very nice and I do believe in it.
I’m not a particularly religious person, but then you don’t have to be religious to be spiritual.
All my life, I’ve had to work for a living and therefore haven’t had the leisure to meditate on a mountain top or be spiritual in a public sense. However, being a writer, I tend to look inwards and am, by nature, a spiritual person.
If life becomes too pressing and the world is too much upon me, a walk in the woods and communion with nature helps. I like being with myself and taking a walk in the unspoilt surroundings and commune if not with God, with myself. I believe being close to nature is a spiritual experience.
And while writing is a mental experience, it’s also an emotional one and the enjoyment and satisfaction I get from it also makes it spiritual. Among writers, I feel a special connection with Thoreau, who went off to live in the woods and poets like Wordsworth.
In my free time, I like watching sports and playing with children. Enjoying what you do keeps you calm and in touch with your inner self. Was falling in love a spiritual experience? While it leaves you feeling hot and bothered, it also connects you with the higher self.
Spirituality to me means being at peace with oneself and with the world in general. It’s hard not to be grumpy or frustrated at times, especially when I hear the growing traffic below my window or the trucks banging into the boundary wall and my neighbor’s garbage incinerator sending bursts of smoke into my room, but I’ve by and large made my peace with these things. The Times of India
