Dr Manish Pandit's blog

Temple looked after by Muslims

By Dr Manish Pandit | Sept. 19, 2010 | Published in Mid day

Reports by the Archaeological Survery of India are clear: a temple dating to at least the 10th century AD with the original provenance of the structure going to the 1st millnium BC, exists at the disputed site, below the foundations of the disputed structure. So, people who were initially in favour of a temple on the basis of faith, now have evidence to support it. I hope prominent individuals from the Muslim community come forth with a gesture that will assuage and soothe sentiments, such as offering to build a temple at the site for their Hindu brothers. Maybe, even looking after the upkeep, if they wish. After all, such a religious traditions exists in India. There are religious sites like Shirdi, where Muslims and Hindus offer homage. Such a plan would take the steam out of fringe elements on both sides.

The Good, the Bad and what makes them so

By Maria Wirth | Jun. 17, 2010

The II. World War had ended only five years before I was born in western Germany. And already as a child I ‘knew’ who is good and who is bad and who is right and who is wrong: the Russians were bad and the Americans were good. The Roman Catholics were right and the Protestants were wrong and all others very wrong. For long I never questioned those axioms. They seemed to be fundamentals. Everyone around shared them. I never had seen a Russian, but surely they were not normal people like us Germans. They were terrifying. They had taken part of our country and may come for more. Whereas the Americans had sent us food and when their army convoys drove through our small town, the soldiers threw chewing gum and waved to us children. No doubt they were good.

When I grew up this mind set weakened but lingered. I still remember my first meeting with Russians: I was sitting in the foreigners’ office in Trichy in 1984. It was still the cold war era. On the same bench next to me two men were sitting. The officer said to them “She is German” and to me, “They are Russians”, and we immediately bent forward and stared at each other. Then we laughed. The barrier was broken.

Luckily I also managed to breach the other barrier that is more difficult to overcome because terrible punishment is threatened if one dares to ‘leave the true faith’ – the barrier that made Catholics, or at least Christians, right and others wrong. It was instilled very effectively from childhood. Whenever ‘Catholic Church’ was mentioned, and it was often mentioned, a long prefix went with it: “alleinseligmachende”. It meant that the Catholic Church alone is capable of saving one’s soul. And if one goes astray it held out the most horrific punishment that can be imagined: burning eternally in hellfire. An adult who has not been taught about eternal hell in childhood in all likelihood will not believe it exists. How could God be so cruel to let his children burn in hell for ever and ever? And that too on the basis of only one and possibly disadvantaged life? Even the most heartless parent would not wish such a fate for his disobedient offspring. Yet a child does not reason and believes what he is told and eternal hell appears real and terribly frightening for young minds.

I still remember that at the age of nine I had skipped Sunday Mass. Skipping Sunday Mass was at that time a cardinal sin with hell as punishment. How much I feared I could die before I had confessed my sin to the priest! I did not doubt that in that case I would go to hell.

Fortunately some of our nuns in boarding school were exceptionally hypocritical and unfair. That made it easier to get out of the mindset that only Catholics go to heaven and others go to hell. Further, the priest who was teaching religion was not convincing with his proof that ‘our’ God exists. I found, however, proof in physics: if this whole universe, we included, is basically one energy, then this all pervading energy must be God. A God that is for everyone, not just for Christians.

I share these personal details to show how easily children are influenced and in many cases for life. I had heard of ‘brainwashing’ already in primary school. The Russians were doing it, we were told. I imagined then that brains were actually washed. Later I realised that it was about telling someone falsehood again and again till he believed it to be true. I felt it was bad to do this to people. However I did not realise that we were also brainwashed. We were also told falsehoods and made to believe them as true. Our whole society collaborated to impart certain views: Russians were bad. Heathens go to hell. God loves only Catholics. And we children believed it.

There is reassurance and a sense of strength in belonging to a big group of likeminded people and great danger – the danger that ‘others’ who don’t belong to one’s group are eyed suspiciously and even hatred for them can be easily whipped up. And when hate is whipped up, human values, love and kindness have no place anymore and the ugly face of mankind comes to the fore. It happened in Nazi Germany, it happened in communist countries and it happened in the numerous religious wars over the centuries and is still happening in the name of religion.

Strangely, religion, which is meant to connect us with God and make us virtuous, is the major cause of conflict in our world. Yet it may not appear so strange if one takes a closer look. Both the major monotheistic religions claim that they alone are the ‘only true religion’ and everyone should either join them or at least acknowledge this fact. Naturally, this is a recipe for conflict. Unless these supremacy claims are taken up and genuinely examined, there is little chance for humanity to live in peace. It is natural to think that one’s religion is the best. Otherwise, why would one follow it? And there is nothing wrong in this attitude. But does anyone own the Truth? Does Truth not own us? Is Truth not upholding all of us?

When I watched boys throwing stones in Kashmir I wondered how they feel. Do they feel it is their religious ‘duty’? Are they full of hate for the ‘enemy’? Will they accept well meaning ‘confidence building measures’ from the ‘others’ as well meaning? Most probably they will reject them as a ploy to lure them into abandoning what they ‘know’ is right. They probably will listen only to leaders from their own group and will not question their orders.

Unicef and those in education would have a task cut out, if they took up the issue of brainwashing of hate for ‘others’ into children all over the world. There is, however, one problem: are those in politics, education and religion and the adults working for Unicef still afflicted from their own brainwashing as children? Do they still divide humanity into those who are good and those who are bad? Into those who are right and those who are wrong? Into those who go to heaven and those who go to hell? Or can they see that we all belong to one big family whose members are different in many aspects and carry different labels, yet nevertheless we all are siblings, permeated and animated by the same life force?

The Problem with ‘God’

By Maria Wirth | Aug. 17, 2010

‘God’ is a much used word yet hardly anyone pauses to find out what is meant by it. ‘Isn’t it clear?’ religious people may ask and answer: God is the Highest, the Creator of the universe, the Almighty who knows whatever any human is dong or thinking and it is He who will give the punishment or reward in the afterlife.

Well, this is the Western notion. Nobody will quarrel with the fact that this universe and we included have to come from somewhere and ‘God’ is given as the verbal answer. Yet somehow, ‘God’ has acquired strange attributes in the mind of westerners. He is invariably male, has strong likes and dislikes and has supposedly communicated those likes and dislikes to some special people who informed humanity about it. Reading the Old Testament and the Koran reveals a God who is hateful towards those who don’t believe in him and keen on smiting those ‘enemies’ and punishing them with eternal hell.

Somehow this western view of God has taken over any discussion about God, maybe because the majority of human beings seem to believe it. This view is reinforced and fear of eternal hell is instilled in small children generation after generation. Even when they are adults, they don’t question their belief. It has become part of their mental make up. And there is comfort in believing that one has the ‘right’ belief and is belonging to a big group of like minded people.

However, in the Christian west, many people do nowadays question their belief and even the very existence of God. Atheists feel they have a cause and do their best to make their religious fellowmen lose faith. In England busses ply with placards saying “There is probably no God”. “God Delusion”, a bestseller by Richard Dawkins, focuses on refuting this God and finds many takers.

This God certainly deserves scrutiny. Is it possible that God is a sort of superhuman entity and heavily biased towards his followers and unforgiving towards ‘others’? Are there different views? Here, ancient India could help the west. Usually, one would expect that over time concepts become more refined, but in the case of ‘God’, over the millennia, the concept became more gross.

In ancient times, long before Christianity or Islam appeared, Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism had a very mature understanding of Brahman which would be ‘God’ in English. Brahman (there are other names, too, like Paramatman or Tat) was not personal, not a superhuman entity, not male or female, but the most subtle, invisible, conscious, one basis of all. The Rishis meditated on Brahman and came out with astonishing insights. They realised that this universe is a sort of shadow play or misinterpretation of Brahman, completely dependent on It but not the real thing. They had criteria for what is true. One: it has to be at all times – past, future and present – and two: it has to be shining of its own and not need anything else to shine. Those two criteria dismiss the whole apparent universe as untrue. Apart from the fact that it was not always there but started with a bang, it also needs something to ‘shine’ – it needs consciousness. So what is left after the universe is dismissed as not true? That what is left is the real thing and could be called God. It is the extremely subtle, conscious basis of everything. It means that God is here right now as the source of our awareness. Yet somehow we miss out on being aware of this source.

Now how to go about discovering it?

Simply knowing the truth intellectually will not do. The Jnana (knowledge) path is difficult, said Shri Krishna. The Bhakti (devotion) path is easier and here another view of God comes in: Ishwara. This view is relatively close to the western notion of God but far more benevolent. There is no eternal punishment. Everyone gets chance after chance. Yes, suffering may be included depending on one’s karma but it is in the realm of maya, from where one will ultimately wake up like waking up from a nightmare. Ishwara is God with attributes and has innumerable aspects. These are personified in many devas and the devotee can choose the one who is dearest to him. It helps to develop friendship and intimacy with the invisible - through Shiva Brahma, Vishnu, Devi, Ganapathi and many more. Those Devas, who are mistakenly much maligned by western religions, are not separate entities but a kind of access point to the one Brahman. And the scriptures leave no doubt that the devas are ultimately Brahman.

For example, the Ganapathi Upanishad clearly states that Ganapathi is the all in all:

“Tvameva kevalam karta si, tvameva kevalam dharta si, tvameva kevalam harta si.

Tvameva sarvam khalvidam brahmasi, tvam saksadatma si nityam.”

(You alone are the creator, you alone are the sustainer, you alone are the annihilator. All this is Brahman and you are that Brahman. You are indeed the Atman eternally.)

It goes on to analyse that Ganapathi is beyond the 3 gunas (satva, raja, tamas), the 3 mental states (waking, dream and sleep), the 3 bodies (physical, astral, causal) the 3 times (past, present, future) and much more.

It is awe-inspiring that those deep and analytical words were uttered thousands of years ago. Today, this transcendental dimension of God is mostly ignored. Apart from the mystics of all religions, who discovered the transcendental dimension as true, people generally consider God as a personal entity. ‘He’ is supposed to be watching us from somewhere.

Science has done away with this God. Einstein considered the notion of a personal God as naïve. Yet scientists don’t quite realise that the ultimate truth that they seek is basically the Brahman of ancient India. A national daily reported a few days ago that Lord Rees, a noted cosmologist and president of the royal society, claims that our brain is incapable of cracking the mysteries of the universe. He suspects that space has a grainy structure but on a scale a trillion times smaller than atoms. Yes, it is very subtle and the ultimate truth cannot be thought of, the Rishis also claimed. Yet this truth is not some thing at some place. It is our very being and therefore – the Rishis claim - there is a chance to ‘real-ise’ (know it as real) by turning towards what is unchanging and true about us and develop devotion for That – one could call it God in English.

Anandamayi Ma - “There Are No Others”

By Maria Wirth | Aug. 30, 2010

30 years ago, during the Ardha Kumbh Mela in Haridwar in 1980, the author met two saints who had greatly impressed her: Anandamayi Ma and Devaraha Baba. Here is her write up about meeting Anandamayi Ma in April 1980.

There were several foreigners staying in the tourist bungalow – Americans, Australians and Italians. They had made the journey to the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar primarily because of Anandamayi Ma. They considered her as their guru.

“She is coming tomorrow morning!” Manfred from northern Italy called out to me over the balcony. “Come with us to the railway station to meet her.” He didn’t have to persuade me. I was curious about Ma, because I remembered seeing a photo of her in Paramahansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’: Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma in the middle, and her husband, who looked much older. The photo was taken in the 1930s and showed a beautiful, attractive woman. Almost fifty years had passed since then and I was surprised that she was still alive and anyone could meet her.

At dawn we went by cycle rickshaws to the railway station. Even at that early hour pilgrims flocked to the Ganges in a steady stream.

Then, hooting and with a cloud of smoke trailing overhead, the train from Varanasi pulled in and screeched to a halt. Four young men in spotless white dhotis entered the first class compartment and carried Ma out on a chair, to which four handles were attached. Ma looked fragile and delicate, was wrapped in white cotton cloth and her black, oiled hair fell over her shoulders. She looked at us with calm eyes. There was no reaction on her face, no sign of recognition of her devotees, many of whom she would have known for decades. She simply looked and her eyes moved slowly around the group. It was pleasant, and I had the strange feeling, that nobody was there behind those eyes.

When I saw her like this, tears were rolling down my cheeks. There was no reason for tears to well up and yet they kept flowing and didn’t want to stop. “That’s normal, when one is touched by a great soul”, someone next to me, who had noticed it, reassured me. And indeed I had the feeling that I had been touched by a very pure soul.

Anandamayi Ma went to her ashram in Kankhal and we followed her in taxis. Kankhal extends to the south of Haridwar and is more idyllic, quiet and laid-back, which has changed meanwhile to a certain extent with the increased traffic in the narrow lanes. It mainly consists of large ashrams surrounded by boundary walls.

Ashrams are often compared to monasteries, and in a sense this comparison is valid: its residents are ideally striving for god- or self-realisation (god and self are interchangeable in Indian philosophy). Yet there is a major difference: an ashram comes up around an extraordinary human being: an enlightened master or at least someone, who is spiritually above average. That person attracts attention, because she rests in the innermost being and does not seek any benefits for her own person. People, who are interested in knowing the truth, want to stay near her, because someone, who knows the truth, is said to be of invaluable help to someone, who wants to realise it. So they build houses and an ashram is taking shape. It usually continues to exist, even when that great personality dies without a designated successor. Henceforth the tomb, called samadhi, becomes the focus of veneration, as it is supposed to have power. Anandamayi Ma’s samadhi in Kankhal is today such a focus, since her death on 27^th August 1982.

The taxi stopped at the gate of Ma’s ashram. Flower vendors eagerly awaited us. They offered garlands of jasmine, marigold or even roses, which were tightly pressed into a net and shed a wonderful fragrance. Everyone entered the ashram with either flowers or fruits in his hands. An American put a garland into my hands.

In the centre of the courtyard a chair was placed for Ma. She sat down and we, about thirty people, were standing around her. Now she asked some of her devotees, how they were doing, whether everything was okay and so on. The questions were commonplace, and yet there was a sense of sublime grandeur in the air.

Then with a garland in his hands somebody went up to her and kneeled down. He placed the garland at her feet and his forehead on the ground. Two women assistants, who sat on the floor right and left of Ma’s chair, threw the garland over his head. Then he got up, slowly and with folded hands, his gaze fixed on Ma and probably hoping that she, too, would look at him, which was not always the case. One by one went up to her like this, including my foreigner friends and it became plain to me, that the garland in my hands was waiting for a similar destiny.

I felt ill at ease. I was new in India, yet I decided do ‘pranam’, as it is called in India, when one bows before the divinity in a human being.

I walked up to Ma, kneeled down and put my flower garland at her feet and my forehead on the ground. When I lifted my head again and looked up to Ma, she looked above my head towards the group. I went back to my place disappointed. “When you couldn’t see, Ma looked down at you”, someone next to me kindly whispered into my ear. I had noticed it already on the railway station, and now, in the courtyard, I noticed it again: her gaze was different. It touched the heart and widened it. And it was painful, when it was withheld. Because of her short, fleeting gaze and the feeling that it induced, I went from then on every evening by rickshaw to Kankhal.

Was Ma enlightened? I didn’t know, but felt, it was possible. Melita Maschmann, a journalist, who has lived in India already since 1963 and written several books, two of them about Anandamayi Ma, was the only other German in the courtyard and she explained to me what enlightenment meant:

‘Ma sees in everything and everywhere only the one god, that is, her own self. For her, ‘others’ don’t exist. She herself has said that only because of convention she differentiates between herself and others. In truth, she doesn’t see a difference and there is no difference.’

So basically, there is no difference between an enlightened being and us ordinary mortals. We differ only in one aspect: an enlightened being lives in that oneness, feels it, is at home in it, whereas we think that we are separate and even prefer to hold on to this illusion, though we, of course, are also at home in the oneness. Oddly, we want to be separate; we are fond of our person, our thoughts, feelings, relationships, memories, hopes and even our worries and pain. We are used to the illusion. It is familiar and almost everyone shares it. So far we were okay. Why should we give it up? Just because of the truth?

Few are ready for it in spite of the assurance that truth is heaven and illusion compared to it hell. All our suffering originates from our imaginary isolation and is completely unnecessary, claim the sages. We don’t need to be afraid of the truth. In fact, truth is the fulfilment, for which we unconsciously long for.

I tried to imagine what Anandamayi Ma perceived, while she looked at us. Did she see our bodies and her own among them as fleeting, transitory waves on the one ocean, while she felt immersed in its immense depth and vastness?

Concepts like truth and god, which I had not considered relevant in recent years and had hardly figured in my vocabulary, seemed in the Indian context important, relevant and natural.

“Life is meant to realise the truth. Truth has to come first. Everything else is secondary”, Anandamayi Ma claimed and did not compromise on that. It seemed logical, if we are indeed taken for a ride by our senses and take falsely an illusion for the truth. And doesn’t science, too, maintain, that the perceived, manifested multiplicity in this universe is a deceptive appearance and that in truth everything is one, a whole?

Ma formulated the essence of Advaita Vedanta, the highest wisdom, in clear and simple terms:

“Behind all the different, perpetually changing names and forms in this universe there is only ‘one thing’ – god or however you like to call it. That alone is eternal, ever the same. This god plays with himself as it were. All appearances are contained in him, like in a mirror. He is the I of our I. Life is meant to realise this - to realise who we really are and drop the wrong identification with our person.”

When her mother had died and was laying out in the ashram, Ma was cheerful and laughed her hearty laugh as usual. Her devotees felt that her behaviour was not quite appropriate for the situation. Ma reacted surprised: “Why? Nothing has happened!” For her dying was like changing a dress. Who would be sad over losing an old dress, when one is still fresh and alive?

In May, when the temperature shot above 40 degrees Celsius in Haridwar, Ma moved to Dehradun in the foothills of the Himalayas. A wealthy couple had built a cottage for Ma in their spacious compound on the outskirts of the town. Towards evening, around sunset, Ma would give darshan there. She sat on a cot on the veranda, behind her the outline of the first range of the mountains against the evening sky that changed into ever new shades of colour. The atmosphere was uplifting and pure.

While waiting for Ma, we were singing bhajans or the Hanuman Chalisa. Once, a girl of about ten sat next to me. She sang full throatily, yet a little out of tune. Her clapping of hands was also slightly out of rhythm. When I heard her singing like this and felt her presence next to me, I liked her more and more. My heart went out to her and was overflowing with love.

Then the veranda door opened and Anandamayi Ma appeared, supported by two women. Even before she reached the cot, she briefly stopped, half turned and looked sort of irritated into my direction. When she finally sat down on the cot, her glance settled on me for a long time. Yet this time, Ma’s glance did not strike me or induce any feeling. It seemed as if there was no centre that could have got struck. I simply looked back at her.

Probably Ma’s glance was attracted by the love that I felt for that girl and probably she really did not perceive us as separate persons. After all, she often declared that it is a mistake to consider oneself as separate from others. But almost certainly all of us, as we were sitting there on the veranda during her daily darshan, wished that she appreciated us personally. And if we were honest, we most likely even wished that she appreciated our own person a little more than the others.

But Ma didn’t oblige. She was not consistent in her attention and affection. A genuine guru can see, even if his disciple can’t see it, that the ego is the culprit who makes life difficult. Naturally he is not interested in flattering the ego and strengthening it – on the contrary.

“The association with an enlightened being consists in getting blows for the ego”, Anandamayi Ma once remarked. My ego felt sometimes the blows, for example, when she didn’t look at me for long and it reacted with heavy, resentful thoughts. It wanted to leave. On the other hand I felt attracted to Ma, because I learnt around her almost effortlessly a new way of life – for example that everything is just right as it is.

“Trust in god. He certainly will look after you and all your affairs, if you really put full trust in him and if you dedicate all your energy to realise your self. You then can feel completely light and free”, Ma claimed and it sounded convincing. By ‘god’ she meant the formless essence in everything. But this essence is not something abstract and cold. It is love and can be experienced as the beloved. She also said, “You are always in his loving embrace.”

It made sense that that great being is the source of love. Where else would love come from? Anandamayi Ma drew my attention again and again to that Great Spirit in me, in whom it is possible to relax and feel fully safe and protected. And I genuinely wanted to follow what she asked of us: ‘Feel his presence in you 24 hours a day.’ I wonder whether, in her state, she could imagine that this is not that easy. 30 years later, I trust that this presence is here in me and is aware 24 hours a day, yet I (what I normally consider as I) feel it rarely…

A Rudraksha in London

By Dr Manish Pandit | Feb. 16, 2010

In 2004, I would commute down from Manchester in the North of England to London every fortnight for a few days to attend sessions for the MSc in Nuclear Medicine.

The journey would normally take me an hour in the morning from Denmark Hill near King’s Cross Hospital where my friend in London stayed, to London Bridge on the overground rail service.

Normally to pass my time, I would try and learn the Krama Patha of the Rudram by listening to it on my mp3 player. This was also my way of blocking out the noise from the rest of the world.

Reflecting one day on the krama path of the Rudram, on my way to Guys Hospital at London Bridge, I was thinking of the sweetness of the chant.

For the uninitiated, Vedic chants can be recited in a number of ways, the most basic of these are syllable based and they then progress using an arithmetical series of the syllables which form the mantra. Krama was one of these arithmetical variants.

“Te Rudra, Rudra manyave ee, Manyavaa Uto ta ish ve ee, Ishave nama ha, nama iti namaha”

The power of any of these variants was such that my mind would find itself playing back the track as if it were in my head at all times, even when I would be engrossed in something else. This was one of my ways of remembering God at all times.

That particular day as I was sitting in the train, my glance went to a newspaper in a fellow commuter’s hands. In an ill mannered fashion, I started reading the headline.

“Hundreds dead in disaster” it said, I didn’t read it any further, my mind was drawn from the sweetness of the chant into a series of thoughts, my peace somewhat interrupted, I saw the bright sunlight outside as my mind blocked out the chant with a series of thoughts.

Why do disasters occur, God?!!

After a little while I was thinking of this, my mind came back to an even keel, and even as I sat there, a moment of clarity struck me like a bolt from the blue and as if a voice said, “It is merely the body which has died, the essence of the being whether human, animal or insect keeps living, if there were no death, how would life on earth be possible? Do not concern yourself with the manner of dying, for it is but predestined, death in effect is the only truth of life.”

With a start, I woke up, I was at London Bridge, I must have nodded off on the train journey. This in itself was highly unusual, I never sleep on trains.

I got off the train and started walking towards Guys Hospital.

As I wrestled with this weird idea of death being the only truth of life, I wondered about the preconceived notion which most humans including me have, that birth is good and death is bad. We celebrate birth, but our attachment to the physical appearance and our emotions bind us and make us lament death.

The moment I thought of this, I felt that this was so radical a thought, even for me, that I finally asked for a sign, a nimitta, an omen that what I had thought of was indeed true.

There is a Starbucks café in front of Guys Hospital in London. As the Sree Rudram played in my ears, from a distance, I suddenly caught a glimpse of a tiny object on the sidewalk. As I came nearer, I realised that it was a single pristine Rudraksha. A tear came unbidden to my eye, as I tried to grasp the enormity of God’s immense mercy. I bent down, picked it up and silently said “Jai Shiv Shambhu”

At that moment, I was at peace, all my questions were answered, no words were necessary, neither death, nor birth, only Shiva existed. I keep it with me to help me remember when I forget.

Many years on, I try to imagine how impossible a scenario this actually was. Finding a rudraksha in London on a sidewalk, at the same time that Shri Rudram is playing on a mp3 player in my ears at the same time that one asks for a sign from Shiva.

Then I remember Narada Muni’s words to the person who was performing sadhana for many births, “God is passing a camel through the eye of a needle.”