Ravi S. Iyer: Spiritual

Last updated on 11 Aug. 2026 These statements offer a framework of belief in God that is either compatible with science or not in conflict with science, tailored for Omni-God traditions including Hinduism and Christianity. Related Background I think I have a good understanding of core Hinduism religion and a decent understanding of Christian religion. As of 2020, according to Wikipedia , Christianity and Hinduism taken together comprises 43.7% of the world population with Islam taking up 25.6%, unaffiliated taking up 24.2%, Buddhism 4.1% and other religions taking up only 2.4%. Buddhism and Jainism do not seem to believe in an all-powerful creator God. This document will not apply to those religions and any other religion that does not believe in an all-powerful creator God. I do think that this document will largely align with the perspectives of scientists and technologists from Hindu and Christian traditions who personally believe in God. I am referring to these two faiths t...

Last updated on 11 Aug 2026 On this ravisiyer blog (in reverse date created order) Statements of Belief in God that is either Compatible with Science OR Not in Conflict with Science - Omni-God faiths like Hinduism and Christianity Created: Aug 2026, Last updated: Aug 2026. About why I put up my iami1.wordpress.com blog on spirituality and God & Science arguing for faith against atheism, and then self-published the paperback & ebook on it Jan 2019 Conversation on software techie spiritual aspirants, Hinduism, Science, Christian faith etc. with an old techie colleague of mine Created: Aug 2018, Last updated: Sep 2018 Elevating hard science to a pedestal of worship as the only way or even a primary way to arrive at facts & truth (knowledge) about all or most of life, is not a balanced and good approach Jun 2018 Conveying why my Existential reality; Vedanta; God & Science conversation iami1 blog book may be of some interest to open-minded (hard science) scientists and...

Found it interesting that my "Divine revelation gems from Chandogya Upanishad: Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu)", https://iami1.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/divine-revelation-gems-from-chandogya-upanishad-chapter-6-dialogue-between-uddalaka-and-svetaketu/ blog post (on a different blog of mine) written 8 years ago still gets some visitors once in a while (around 60 visits in the past year). I checked out Google search ranking for it for the term: divine revelations in chandogya upanishad I was surprised to see that in both my account search as well as incognito search on desktop and mobile, for the above term, my above post is ranked #1. I re-read the post today and was quite pleased with it. I am happy that this humble post of mine on core Vedantic philosophy including the Tat Tvam Asi (Thath Thvam Asi) Mahavakya (Mahaavaakya) which is part of Chandogya Upanishad: Chapter 6, is of interest to few persons. Family heritage wise, I am a Sama Vedi Brahmin and Cha...

Today I saw this recent article in the news: Comedian Louis CK says India has ‘functioning poverty’ which is still better than New York: ‘Nobody looks at you’ . I think the remarks of Louis CK match my views. I have seen poverty in Mumbai and surrounding areas where I lived for most of my childhood and young adult years (till 2002), and in Puttaparthi and surrounding areas where I have lived over two decades now (from end 2002). In the 1980s and early 1990s, I have spent some time in the USA as well. It is with that background that I say that Louis' views match my views. This triggered me to lookup some old posts of mine. I was very happy to see this post: Shirdi Sai Baba's life and sayings on Sufi Maqaams (stations) of faqr (poverty), sabr (patience) and tawakkul (trust/surrender) , Sept. 2016. That's almost ten years back! The post clearly covers the emphasis Shirdi Sai Baba laid on leading a life of poverty ('faqr') and how that is part of the traditional Sufi li...

My recent Facebook post shared this post about an ancient Narasimha avatar carving in Kaiyuan temple in Quanzhou, China:  https://www.facebook.com/thebharatpost/posts/a-fascinating-cultural-link-is-drawing-attention-to-a-rare-carving-of-narasimha-/1323013913019340/ The share comments of  my above mentioned recent Facebook post  are given below. Very interesting! More background from the wiki page for the Kaiyuan Temple (Quanzhou), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiyuan_Temple_(Quanzhou) : The temple is also one of few in China to contain Hindu monuments, left there by traders from Southern India. --- end wiki extract --- Quanzhou is a port city in the Southeastern coastal part of China. As per Gemini AI: In the "distant past"—specifically during the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties—Quanzhou was effectively the center of the maritime world. Because of its location, it was the primary destination for Tamil merchants and other South Indian traders who crossed ...

Last updated on 27 April 2026 My last spiritual update post was in end Jan. this year. Here's a short update to that. The Dissolve into God Sadhana (DIGS) is going on well. Regular prayer to Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is also going on well. Some notes I had made over the past few months are given below. Feel the lasting truth break. I can have this break when I need a break from activity that is straining me mentally. This can be a long session of software development work which is becoming difficult like a long unsuccessful debugging or trial and error session. I have had partial success with this approach. Quite a few times, I take this break, which I also refer to as DIGS break. While I have not timed it, the impression I have is that after around half an hour of such a break, my mental tiredness reduces significantly. But sometimes I have failed in the attempted DIGS break. My mind does not settle into it. So I then typically unwind (the mind) and relax by doing something el...

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 .

29 Dec. 2025 Update: Readers may want to have a look at my recent related post (on another blog):  Are any persons interested in sponsoring software development for free Gita JSON files API hosted on free-tier GitHub Pages?  end-29 Dec. 2025 Update ======================= Techie post but as it is about Bhagavad Gita, I felt I should put it up here. A few days back, I noticed that my Next.js Bhagavad Gita web app, https://gita-rsi.vercel.app/ was giving an error as its graphql backend Gita data service - https://gql.bhagavadgita.io/graphql - provided by somebody else, and so not in my control, was not working. As that backend service continued to be down (including now when I checked), I modified the app to use a simpler alternate service, with app functionality becoming limited. The app's About page has details. This incident triggered me to explore whether I could become independent of others' backend data services by deploying my own Gita data backend. Very interestingly, ...

This blog's total views crossed 1 million views a few days back. The blog was started in August 2013 and so this is over a period of 12 years and few months. I felt it appropriate to record this milestone with a post.  Perhaps it may be of interest to some readers. I am not active on this blog for the past two years or so. Excluding tiny referral posts which simply refer to posts I have put up on some of my other blogs, I have put up 25 posts on this blog in past two years or so (from October 2023), making it an average of around 2 posts per month. So it is quite interesting that Blogger stats for the past 12 months (for this blog) reports 136K (136,000) views. Surely some of these views are from non-human bots and also referral spam which cannot be considered as genuine views. Visitors can see the total count of views in the menu of this blog, which is usually accessible from top left menu dropdown in blog window or in the left side menu panel in a large width window (>= 1...

Some readers may be interested in a recent post of mine on another blog:  Blogger's Don't track my views setting gets reset after some time - Probable cause; Chrome extn for notification if reset .

Last updated on 1 Oct. 2025 I was hesitant to share my view about this statement attributed (don't know if the attribution is correct) to the great Nisargadatta Maharaj, in a Facebook post : "It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you. Dissolve it in awareness. It is merely a bundle of memories and habits." After some internal debate, I decided to share it, as I thought it may be of some help to some spiritual aspirants. Dissolve suffering in awareness - I find that very interesting as I am very much into "Dissolve in Awareness-I/God meditation" nowadays. "Dissolve in Awareness-I/God meditation" is giving me great contentment and peace but only when my body is relatively free from significant issues or when I am not facing other serious problems. However, as of now at least, I cannot dissolve suffering in awareness. I have to try to resolve any suffering issues I have by prayer to help cope with them and also prayer to get them ...