Surrounding the second and the third chakra is the Void which stands for the principle of mastery (guru principle) within us. In many spiritual traditions, this area is the “ocean of illusions” that needs to be crossed with the help of a spiritual guide. When the Kundalini is awakened and passes through the Void, this principle of mastery is established within us.
“As the Kundalini rises into the third part, next to the Nabhi Chakra, we become absolutely righteous. This area, which we call as the Ocean of Illusion, is enlightened by ten principles of mastery. The great masters have created these ten centers of commandment which are enlightened and we become holy. There is no need to be strict in one’s behavior. We automatically become really spiritual. Like an egg becomes the bird, we are born twice. In Sanskrit a Yogi or the one who knows about Brahma, meaning the All-Pervading Power, is called Dwija and a bird is also called Dwija, meaning twice born. There were Abraham and Moses and all the ten Primordial Masters who have been born again and again on this Earth. Zoroastra has been born five times and also so many of these were born in different places in different countries to guide the people to take to religious life to establish the necessary balance for the ascent.
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Yagna or yajna is an outer form of worship in which offerings are made to different deities in a prescribed and systematic manner by qualified priests to supplicate them, so that they would assist the worshipper in achieving certain results in life.
The chanting of mantras while performing the sacrifices is expected to ensure fulfillment of specific desires, the overall welfare of an individual, a group of people or the entire society.
The simplest form of yajna is the domestic ritual performed by the householder who would offer simple oblation into the sacred fire lit in his house. A more complicated version involves setting up of three to five fires and pouring of offerings into them such as food grains, ghee or butter, and other vegetable substances by chosen and qualified priests, chanting mantras simultaneously, invoking various gods especially Agni, Indra, Varuna etc.
By Karol Zemek
Browse all articles by Karol Zemek in the NS Library
1,080: population in millions 2005 . . .
3.3: area in millions of square km . . .
2 and 7: India’s rankings in the world in terms of population and area respectively . . .
16: official/national languages . . .
22: languages with over one million speakers in India . . .
59.5: percentage of adult literacy (70.2 per cent of men, 48.3 per cent of women) . . .
8,598: height of Kanchenjunga, India’s highest point, in metres . . .
17: percentage of Indian university students citing Hitler as a model for leader of India . . .
869.6: Hindus living in India (in millions) . . .
144.76: Muslims living in India (in millions) . . .
February 15, 2006 13:19 IST
An Indian sailor was allegedly beaten to death by his colleagues on board a Norwegian oil tanker in the international waters off the coast of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates following an argument over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in some European newspapers. A fight ensued among the seamen after an argument over the issue, causing the death of one sailor, a media report said.
Official sources confirmed the death of 31-year-old Sudhir Jagannathan, a native of Mumbai.
r. Santosh Helekar
Here are the tentative conclusions drawn from the latest human genetics findings. They are taken mostly from the following three papers:
1) Basu et al. (2003) Ethnic India: A genomic view, with special reference to peopling and structure, Genome Research, 13, 2277-2290.
2) Bamshad et al. (2001) Genetic evidence on the origins of the Indian caste populations, Genome Research, 11, 994-1004.
3)Cann, R. (2001) Genetic clues to dispersal in human populations: Retracing the past from the present, Science, 291, 1742-1748.
When exactly the Indian subcontinent was first populated by modern humans is not known with any degree of certainty. However, genomic studies indicate that India was settled very soon after humans emerged out of Africa. These studies provide the mean upper and lower limits for this event - 63,000 years and 32,000 years before the present (B.P.), respectively.
Summary-The personalities of people who are involved with spiritual practices like prayer, meditation and ceremony are shaped by the altered-state experiences their spirituality creates. The part of the brain that manages our states of consciousness, the temporal lobes, is a little busier in these people than most, producing personality traits that appear over and over among spiritually oriented people.
October 2002, Jaipur, [IPS] - A 50-kilometer journey from the capital of Rajasthan, brings visitors to Chakwara village - and back into the Middle Ages. Here, after all, is a society based on terrible persistent inequalities, social servitude and economic bondage. At the centre of the serfdom, and legitimizing it, is the systemic, systematic and religiously sanctified discrimination against the Dalits, India’s former ‘untouchables’.
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By Thomas Reuter
Hindu empires had flourished in Java for a millennium until they were replaced by expanding Islamic polities in the 15th century, setting the stage for Indonesia becoming the world’s largest Muslim nation. In the 1970s, however, a new Hindu revival movement began to sweep across the archipelago. Hinduism is gaining even greater popularity at this time of national crisis, most notably in Java, the political heart of Indonesia. Based on preliminary ethnographic research in five communities with major Hindu temples, this paper explores the political history and social dynamics of Hindu revivalism in Java. Rejecting formalist approaches to the study of religion, including the notion of ’syncretism ‘, the Hindu revival movements of Java are treated as an illustration of how social agents employ religious or secular concepts and values in their strategic responses to the particular challenges and crises they may face in a specific cultural, social, political and historical setting.
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While the old gods of the Vedas (Indra, Agni, Dyaus, Mitra, Varuna, etc. [note]) eventually were demoted by Hinduism to a position inferior to the Vedas themselves, in the Upanis.ads Brahman came to be conceived as the Supreme Being, or just Being — the One. According to the Dvaita Vedânta interpretation of the Upanis.ads, Brahman is a personal God, distinct from individual souls (atmans) and from matter.[1] Such a personal Brahman, whether formulated philosophically or not, comes to be identified in popular religion with either Vis.n.u or Shiva. Since different gods are thus proposed as the One God, Hinduism is an unusual kind of monotheism: it contains virtual sub-religions consisting of the devotees of Vis.n.u, the Vaishnavites, and the devotees of Shiva, the Shaivites. It is best to see this as an instance of the “multiplicity of explanations.”
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