Ravi S. Iyer: Spiritual

Contents of my recent Facebook post are given below. Today Facebook showed me this 8 years old post of mine. While I rarely write on spirituality nowadays, I decided to share it along with some info. about the related book, as it may be of interest to any readers contemplating on self-publishing their first spiritual book. The book in the shared post was my first effort at publishing or rather self-publishing a book. Initially I explored a local printer in Puttaparthi - the pics in the shared post are of the local printer printed book (cover page and book printing in general was not very good). Later I moved to self-publishing the book through Pothi.com and Notion Press (both provided much better printing of the book including cover page). Note that I published the ebook as free download and the printed book at not-for-profit minimal price. The big takeaway for me from this effort was that even now years after I self-published it and moved on to other stuff, that book is around and se...

Last updated on 12 April 2026 After a gap of 50 years, human beings have gone beyond the earth's orbit, orbited the moon and are safely back on earth - Artemis II. Astounding feat! Congratulations to the NASA led Artemis II mission. The crew are: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. That is a first in my adult lifetime as I was around 10 years old in December 1972 when Apollo 17 mission happened which was the last previous 'crewed' mission that went beyond low Earth orbit. I don't recall being aware of it at the time, though surely I would have read about it, seen it on TV, or been told about it then. It just did not leave a strong enough mark on my brain for me to recall it now over 50 years later. "During their lunar flyby, the (Artemis II) crew set the record for human distance from Earth, 252,756 miles (406,771 km), breaking Apollo 13's record of 248,655 miles (400,171 km).", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II. Saw thes...

Readers may want to have a look at my post on another blog of mine: Gita web app with many English, Hindi and Sanskrit translations and commentaries: Project status in non-technical language

I had a very enjoyable review session with ChatGPT free-tier today, 29 Jan. 2026, on an update to  a previous spiritual post on this blog . ChatGPT (CG) did a great job of analysing my update from content accuracy and consistency point of view. Its detailed remarks helped confirm that my update would be easy to read and understand for a reader. Further, CG's review remarks prompted me to better explain my experience of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba's (Swami) miracles by adding the word, ecstasy, to thrill, giving the phrase 'ecstatically thrilling' which captured my experience much better than simply thrill. CG's review remarks for this change validated that change very well. CG was able to relate to my Swami experiences very well. That made the exchange very pleasant. I also found ChatGPT's English language usage to be very good in its review remarks and that gave me a lot of pleasure. I enjoy good usage of language. I thought some readers may enjoy this exchang...

Last updated on 29 Jan. 2026 Note: I am simply sharing some aspects of my spiritual journey in this free social media post. The sole motivation for putting up this post is that it may be of interest to some reader(s), now or in future. The last update post I put up was in Sept-Oct. 2025: Got some mental clarity about how I, as single spiritual aspirant, should handle health challenges; Sensitive parts coded; Current main goals . The My current main goals  section in it covers Dissolve In/Into God Sadhana (spiritual practice) which is abbreviated to DIGS. Jan. 2026 Update: I continue to be steady in Dissolve into God Sadhana (DIGS).  Main prompts that I typically use nowadays: When required, before I get to the main prompts, I precede it by short Who am I? / What is my reality? question quickly leading to me focusing on my unchanging awareness (awareness-I). ... This alone is the lasting truth; All else is passing show. This is optionally followed by: This I (awareness-I) is th...

Readers may want to see my recent post on another blog:  Gita JSON files API Initial Version Done; Inviting Second Chunk Sponsorship for Remaining Work .