What is Love?

One continuously sees this in most spiritual literature, love and god as synonyms of one another. What is God , then becomes a question what is love? Is love a feeling? Is it a mental state? Is it a goal or a reward? Is it necessary? Why the obsession with this word? Why is it associated with the good? as apposed to hate which is its opposite and bad. What is Love?
Is Love a feeling?-Yes but its more than a single feeling. Love is an attitude, a culmination of several positive thoughts towards an external object. Its a blanket feeling of benevolence towards that object. Its a feeling of radiating positive energy towards that object. Its a feeling that you want to nourish that object with growth capsules. Its a force of positive growth for that object. One can sense it when one is loved. It gives one energy to face things. Sometimes one has to give this energy to others, sometimes one receives this energy. By giving it out, one is not depleted, its like a endless underground geyser which seems to keep flowing as you extract more.
Is love a mental state?-Yes thats what it is.
Is it a goal or a reward?-its both. one can aim to be a fountainhead of positive thoughts towards one and all, and when one receives the same energy from the outside, it becomes a reward.
Is it necessary?- Yes it is. When you have no love to give or receive, you land yourself in a state of inertia-not wanting to do anything. Love is the motivating force that drives you to go on with your life.
Why the obsession with the word?-perhaps its nature's way of showing our next evolutionary goal. But this word requires deep understanding and practise in daily life. Almost like a good breathing excersice. Can one get up each day and say , I am going to love every minute of this day? Can one make a promise to oneself that all that you meet today will be touched by a positive energy from you? Can you fill your heart and mind with a sense of benevolence to everyone and everything? Consciously? Its extremely tough. Its fun to go to the other extreme and ridicule things, its fun to be sarcastic, its fun to be mean. It takes an effort to love, an effort to be consistent. Hence one easily gives up, specially since it seems fashionable to do its opposite. Can one stand alone and be without contempt for anybody? Can one see a spark of goodness in everything? Its the primeval battle-good vs evil, love vs hate. Will you let love win today?

When you go to the Astral Plane/ Kamalaoka..

You are dead. A new journey has begun...

For a moment imagine all that you are, is only your mind. Your thoughts, feelings, memories and knowledge is all that you are. No Body. How would you feel-free at first-no more aches pains, itches, no ugly stretch marks, bald patches, no loose flesh, no wrinkled skin. In this freedom of just the bundle of thoughts, you float around. Still in this world-only you can now see the others also with their thought bundles floating around, plainly as you saw them as bodies in your earlier life. Some are selfish, some are obsessed with some desires, some are full of themselves-arrogant, some are completely miserable,some pleasantly happy.

So now in this world, you begin your thought process, the same way you would , in the previous one-perhaps, by comparison-asking yourself-ok, where do i stand in this world. You sift thru your good and bad thoughts, your positive energy giving ones and your negative weakening ones. Since ,you are only thought, you aim to reduce the negative ones, cultivate the positive ones. Suddenly ,you have now a clearer idea of what are really good thoughts and what leads to unhappiness and frustration. You learn more about how others think-you see other's viewpoints clearly and begin to accept notions which you in your earlier form had rejected.

This education goes on until the first thought of desire creeps in- i am so hungry- would love a delicious hot juicy jelabi this instant. You are filled with images of this delicasy-suddenly there seems nothing more important or larger than a jelabi. You now have absolutely NO way to eat a jalebi-having lost the human form. You hover in your thought world-until slowly the urge goes away. After a while ,other images of desires trouble you-you realise the limitations of this new state. You realise no desires can be fulfilled on this plane. One can improve one's thought processes, clean one's thought chambers and contemplate several things ,but one cannot actually do anything. One can keep learning , one can keep studying, one can keep solving problems-if these aren't enough, you wonder -oh my god ,my life is BORING.(you also remember in your physical life ,when you had to do something repeatedly, you used the same words.)

Then you decide to solve this issue of boredom-the same way you would have done earlier-you try to learn a new bunch of thoughts-go in a new direction-explore other venues-seek guidance from better beings around you-find joy in sharing and helping someone in a worser plight-ok -you think-this is fun. I am enjoying this state. I am learning to cope. You begin a new life.

(What happens next?....Time passes quickly-a 100, 200 years passes very fast as slowly only the clear beautiful side of your mind world is left, all desires burnt out by sheer lack of fulfillment. You are now ready to leave the Kamaloka and move higher into the sphere of the Devachanic plane- the heaven of your own self creation- of the purest and the most perfect in you. Of all the higher things that you loved in your earthly life.

A 1000/2000 years in this plane- passes again faster again- and you are reborn with your old skandas or propensities/attachments reworking the parts of your karma and trudging through life, once again oblivious to all that has already happened in all those past thousands of years, once again filling the vessel of your 'you ness'....once again creating an I.. once again living blindly...)

The laws of Higher life,sacrifice ,dharma and duty.

The 88th South India conference dealt with the above topics and these are my impressions of the various lectures. Man, constantly is driven by the emergencies of the moment, the issues of daily life, the issues of personal ambition, dreams and desires ,in his actions. He rarely thinks that ,his present life could have a long term effect on life after death. He rarely spends time wondering what stage of evolution his spiritual self is in and how his choices in this birth could aid that growth.


If one were to imagine that one has had countless births before, that at some point in the last million years one has been poor, ultra rich, disabled, super strong, man, eunuch, a foreigner, maybe a buddhist ,widowed, orphaned, drug addict,unstable...what then would one's attitude to humanity around him be? Logically only compassion and a desire to help ,in whatever manner possible or at least be civil and respectful to all around, as one realises the pain of the other and does not want to add to his/her tale of woes. The laws of higher life are essentially this -understanding of living a life of service, compassion and a doing one's dharma or duty.


Duty, is individualistic, depending on the current status of our lives. The duty of a student is to study, the duty of a father is to provide, a mother to nurture etc. Doing one's duty, is doing the right thing at the right time. Duty is automatically obvious to one ,if one is even briefly contemplative. The next question is, how does one make oneself perform one's duties. What are the incentives. One of the main incentives is, perhaps , these bunch of duties that we have now, will at least not recur, in the next round of birth. We would have tackled these problems intelligently and efficiently, and the soul would seek newer challenges. From viewpoint of the reality the law of reincarnation and the law of karma-the law of natural justice, whose existence though is felt by many, but the absence of scientific proof, prevents most from completely and wholeheartedly accepting such doctrines, from these viewpoints, fulfilling one's duty, is then a manner of completing the term of punishment due to our past crimes. One could think better to complete the term than start all over again, entering the jail. Be out, a free man.

All this leads to this thought that is duty an unsavoury task always? The thing to understand is that the while the completion of one's duties, gives one momentary satisfaction-if one is seeking that satisfaction alone-one would only hate to do the duty-as there are so many better ways to seek momentary satisfaction. Hence , duty is a task finished entirely only for the sake of finishing it. 'karmanye vadika rastu,ma phaleshu kadachana'-oft repeated Lord Krishna's quote is the hidden basis of all correct actions on earth. Duty has to be done. Seeking a reward ruins the job- and one inherits new 'duties'. The best way out id to see what are the tasks that one feels compelled from within to complete-only those are our duties and doing them alone and feeling happy while doing them is all there is to this whole problem.

But then, why this case against happiness-isn't that why we are here on earth-to find happiness. The happiness , which we would find in the pursuit of pleasure is fleeting. The same from the pursuit of fulfilling duties transcends births and rebirths. Which would you choose?

Nivruti marga-the process of going in reverse gear-as pointed out by Ms Linda Olievra, in her individualistic style of speaking, is the accumalation of and concentration of energy which one gathers around oneself as one slowly wraps oneself into this narrow path of dharma and duty .And as she points out, a tree sustains itself, within its branches which cover the roots and thus shades it from the hard sun, while every part of it performs a vital role in its survival, the tree also generously gives its surplus to the life around it-shade to humans, habitat or food to animals etc. One can learn a lot from a simple tree. Doing one's duty like a tree does its. These are the small methods to start treading the path of higher life.
One must aim to apply all this every waking moment and not let it be just a rhetoric.

An Outline of Theosophy-CW Leadbeater

The last six months ,I have been reading various books and booklets on theosophy and finally on a recommendation, started reading this book by CWL which I found lucidly clear and precise.

I will concise the learnings from this book as follows- The three basic tenets of theosophy are-
1. There is God and he is benevolent and immortal.
2 Man himself is also immortal .
3 There are certain laws of karma which naturally occur in man's life-as he sows, so he reaps.

Man is born from god and goes back to him, but the process going back is a process of getting the traits of god in himself.

 Man's physical body, his astral body and his mental body play key roles in each of his lives on earth. While Man spends a lot of his time on earth serving the physical and the astral or emotional body, if he diverted this and spent time developing,nourishing his mental body-its this mental body and its quality that decides his position in the evolutionary scale.

 When a noble man dies the initial decades he lives in his astral body and goes through still wanting all the things that he craved for while living-now in absolute frustration since his physical vehicle is no more. Slowly this 'wanting' nature of his burns up in frustration and he begins to accept his fate and then he transcends to the next higher level of the mental or devachanic plane.

 Here, in this more enriching and happy phase he learns to gather all the good thoughts, aims, learnings that he collected in his earth life and lives in this state of vibration for many centuries, until once again his soul decides to be born again. Its the spirit within the soul (a spark of the divine) that decides on what the soul needs to learn and sends it back to the exact circumstances which will teach him broadly what he needs. If at a early age, man learns the basics of being an excellent human being and is constantly striving for mental beauty and perfection, this amount to be learned is reduced, the number of rebirths reduced, the difficulties faced lesser. The purpose of a student of theosophy has to be strive towards this internal excellence, through various methods. The path of polishiing this inner self is meandering one and one has to find one's loop holes and keep correcting as one goes along...so that towards the end of one's life -you can proudly stand up and say, 'I am a far better person that when I started out at first. I worked at it and I am proud of this achievement. I made many mistakes, but I learnt from them. I was haughty, arrogant, mean, rude, selfish, miserly, jealous but I learnt to replace each with humility, kindness, soft speech, charity, generosity and admiration for those who were better than me. I have done for myself, what was needed for my soul and now am ready to leave,until the next adventure beckons me.'

Jiddu on Desire

'Are you following me...are you walking with me...understand me...is this clear??'...time and again in J Krishnamurthy's various videos and audio tapes ,this humble man who rejected all posts and all recognition in his life...speaks with such a zeal of a teacher as someone who really wants to share the light of wisdom that he has chance to see...His talks are always leading-never concluding-asking you to keep thinking about all that he has spoken. One child in one of tapes where he is speaking to the children of Rishi valley, asks 'but where is all this leading us'...and the erudite man says ' am asking you to watch, watch yourself watch, not mechanically but with all your senses, your whole'. He does not preach, does not tell you what to do or not to do...keeps imploring you to probe along with him.

Fascinating his explanation of ' desire'...desire is the image that thought creates after sensory perceptions. For example, if we are admiring a dress in a shop-we see it, feel it, admire its cut and quality of finish-we appreciate it with all our senses. But when our thoughts then start forming an image with us wearing that dress, acquiring it, imagining others appreciate it, imagining that we look handsome in it...that image building is desire. Until we are appreciating the object, we were fine ,its at this stage that the matter is corrupt. But JK does not tell us what do next. Ok, we stop the thoughts from image building. Should we then go on to the next object and let the last object be. Should one desire some objects and not others or should one desire nothing. Is there is difference between desire,Aim/goal/target.am searching....If I dont desire anything, then how do I live?
lets see if things get clearer as i hear more of the great man.

The ethereal beauty of the theosophical grounds

The Theosophical lodge at Chennai is a haven of peace and tranquility. The canopy of trees in its 100 acre spread bordered on the north by the

Adyar river and on east by the bay of bengal, is a green lung to this entire region. As one walks down the roads, one is struck by the almost absence of landscaping -as if it were better to leave as much of it as a forest,so its thoughful dwellers could continue their meditative self corrections in a brihad aranyak (large forest) and discover like in brihad aaranyak upanishad-neti neti-not yet ,not yet...You still have a long way to go, brother.

The Buddhist temple ,the Hindu temple, the Zoroastrian temple, the Sikh temple, the Catholic Liberal church and the Mosque are located randomly in it. Almost like one searches for clarity in the treatises of theosophy ,each hidden secret slowly revealing itself , so do these wonderful buildings of prayer.

To preserve and protect it ,thats what I hope to do in howsoever a small manner, as i did bring up my children so will i help this place with warmth and care.

'Being a True Theosophist'-Radha Burnier.27.02.2010

To be a true theosophist is to think,speak,feel and act by the fundamental principle of theosophy which is Universal Brotherhood.One has to accept each and every living creature to resonate with the matter that we call our 'Self'.To be compassionate to all yet keep alive within us the highest of one's ideals without falling into mediocrity and serendipity.Just being a member of a lodge does not make one a theosophist. By a conscious ingraining of this fundamental principle in every moment of our lives, in all our decisions and actions,one work towards becoming a Theosophist.
The Universal prayer-'O Hidden life vibrant in every atom,O hiddin light shining in every creature,O hidden love embracing all in oneness,May he who finds himself one with thee ,also know that he is one with every other'-is the key.

'The All Inclusiveness of Rigveda' by Prof Nicholas Kazanas

The rigveda-as it is available to us today was put together around 3500BC. by the inhabitants of the Sapta sindhu area-The harappan civilisation.The various sages eg angiras/vashistha composed the ten mandalas the rigveda it is divided into.

Though parts of the Vedas may be 35000 years before christ, yet The Rigveda has specific mention of iron melting and has been proven to be of the Bronze age and not before.

The all inclusiveness of The rigveda lies in the following manner-

• Every God/Goddess of the other ancient tribes-all have their names originating from the Vedas.


• Sanskrit has its roots from the rigveda. The aspect of the sanskrit language in this that most words come from a certain root for eg. the word 'Budh' meaning to realise or awaken is root of other words like- the Buddha, buddhi. the buodha tree-tree of awakening .Thus this system of a root word which flowered into many other words is the basis of the sanskrit vocabulary.
• The rigveda mentions the One ness of God before the Upanishads.-'ekam eva'-one only.As the Rigveda came before the atharva,yajurvedas or the upanishads.


• The method of poetry was invented in the rigveda. There are two ways to write poetry -one is to keep to a meter-eg using the same no. of words,or a certain pattern of words-long short long. Second is Alliteration -The Handsome Hero Held His lover Hungrily.Repitition or rhyming of a phrase.The rigveda uses both techniques.

The rigveda is originated by the indo-aryans who lived in the sapta sindhu area .They are called 'indo' to distinguish them from the aryans who lived in europe. These aryans had been living there for centuries as is signified by the vedic names of their rivers -sarastwati,bhagirathi etc..No immigrants ever name rivers. So also the name for the himalayas-'himavat' the place of cold,snow and ice, also already existed. This proves that sanskrit,the vedic people, the indo aryans were already part of this region. They are known to have travelled eastward after the saraswati river dried to the indo gangetic plain. But it was a migration, not an invasion.

The words like 'devanagari' the city of the devas originates from the rigveda.

Hearing all this made me feel so proud that I belonged to this rich, ancient land of such great texts and inventions.I always erroneously thought India was occupied by invaded aryans...not that the large area of ancient India was always occupied by Aryans.

Philosophy..Who needs it?

A well known book by Ayn Rand-'Philosophy ,Who needs it'..The title of this blog...I decided is the apt tribute to the lady who set me on this path of introspection of the eternal truths life and beyond.
From one Russian Lady to another,Rand to Blavatsky and back to the beautiful language of Sanskrit,whose purity attracted me in school and the discourses at the feets of many masters that I will be witnessing,this blog will catalogue this wonderous journey of one woman trying to complete her education.