Ravi S. Iyer: Spiritual

Last updated on 2nd Oct. 2022 I add to the above questions: When did Hindu mathas (monasteries) start? These are sensitive questions with a variety of conflicting answers from different sources. Therefore initially I was hesitant to put up a post on this topic. Eventually I felt that I should put up a limited post raising the questions and sharing responses mainly from wikipedia. I also decided to split it into two posts with second post addressing the Hindu mathas (monasteries) question but with this post having some common introductory info. I had these questions in my mind for some years now. Reading a section in Romila Thapar's (History of) Early India book revived these questions. In particular, in the section, "Philosophical and Religious Changes" (pages 348 - 362) in the chapter, "The Peninsula: Emerging Regional Kingdoms c. AD 500-900)", Thapar provides her views on the section-title topic which covers some of the ground for the questions raised in this ...

When author of post or comment is not mentioned, it should be assumed that it is me (Ravi S. Iyer). To save time, I am usually not providing my FB post links but only contents. I am also not hyperlinking links. So readers may have to copy-paste links from this post onto a browser link box and then browse to that link. ==========================================     Fascinating 11 second video clip of being above clouds on way to Kedarnath https://twitter.com/ErikSolheim/status/1564417869852487681 ================================ Evidence of how some people were perhaps into gambling with dice around four thousand or more years ago in ancient India. Note that in the Mahabharata epic, gambling among kings and princes was the norm, and which was used by Shakuni, a master dice gambling player, to get Yudishthira to lose his kingdom to Duryodhana, and be banished to the forest for 12 years. So this evidence of what would most likely have been dice based gambling around fou...

I don't know how accurate the extracts I have given below from Gupta empire wiki page are. But I think they are noteworthy as that seems to be how academic historians are viewing them, and so that's what would probably be taught in educational institutions. Some extracts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gupta_Empire  : The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 4th century CE to late 6th century CE. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent.[4] This period is considered as the Golden Age of India by historians.[5][note 1] The ruling dynasty of the empire was founded by the king Sri Gupta; the most notable rulers of the dynasty were Chandragupta I, Samudragupta, and Chandragupta II, also known as Vikramaditya.  ... The high points of this period are the great cultural developments which took place primarily during the reigns of Samudragupta, Chandragupta II and Kumaragupta I. Many Hindu epics an...

I was debating with myself whether I should put up this post as it is somewhat sensitive. Finally I felt that as a social media writer on spirituality and religion, I should publish my views on it. Readers are always free to reject my views. I very much like the Narayan Bhaja Narayan bhajan sung by Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba himself as it is about the avatars of Vishnu or Narayan (Narayan is one of the names of Vishnu, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narayana ), with the avatar being God taking a form (animal or human) to help devotees overcome difficulties and to restore (practice of) Dharma, as per Hindu faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar gives some interesting info. about avatars. An avatar signifies (is) "the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth". The wiki page states that avatars are mentioned in Puranic literature (like Garuda Purana and Bhagavata Purana) but are not mentioned in Vedic literature. As a youngster, ...

In a previous post titled, "An update on my meditation efforts: Had increased Kundalini rising type experiences along with some health issue but have failed to rise above body consciousness; Am now into less intense meditation", https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2022/08/an-update-on-my-meditation-efforts-had.html , I have explained why I had stopped focussing on rising above body consciousness/getting into a trance during my meditation. That led to me going back to my earlier meditation approach prior to 2022 covered in later part of this post (excluding March 2022 update): Have become regular in divine awareness meditation; Meditation affirmation-and-helper statements that I use now in March 2022 and that I used in the past (May 2019), https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2019/05/hope-to-get-back-to-divine-awareness.html . I thought I should share with readers that this (old) meditation approach is going on well for the past few days. But a ***big limitation*** of this approach is ...

Last updated on 17th Aug. 2022 Last minor update on 21st Oct. 2022 This follows up on my post update of 28th & 29th March 2022 here: Have become regular in divine awareness meditation; Meditation affirmation-and-helper statements that I use now in March 2022 and that I used in the past (May 2019), https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2019/05/hope-to-get-back-to-divine-awareness.html . Another related post: Believing that one's reality is awareness and not one's body does not free person from body consciousness; Could intense japam & dhyanam (chanting & meditation) give that freedom?, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2022/03/believing-that-ones-reality-is.html , 8th March 2022 Initially (around and after the post/post update mentioned above), I tried to get into intense meditation with a deep desire to get into a trance/rise above body consciousness. That resulted in stronger Kundalini rising type experiences when I went into intense meditation, than I would have in the pa...

Last updated on 28th Aug. 2022 Preface: I am sticking my neck out on this :-). Perhaps I am going to get clobbered with criticism or worse (mockery). But I felt that I should share my view on this. Constructive criticism is welcome as that may help me catch errors in my thinking/analysis and correct myself. ---- Today as I was meditating and also doing some self-analysis (atma-chintan), it struck me that the Atman (Self) is that which one cannot be separated from. Later I googled for the term: Atman (Self) is that which one cannot be separated from I got this interesting result (in top ten results) whose title is different from what I was looking for but which has some content related to the search term: If ultimate aim of atman (self) is to attain moksha (Brahman), then why atman got separated from Brahman initially?, https://www.quora.com/If-ultimate-aim-of-atman-self-is-to-attain-moksha-Brahman-then-why-atman-got-separated-from-Brahman-initially . Let me also share some extracts fr...