Future projects for this Blog

Time Rich Cash Poor Gentleman is a loose definition of a group of people who can be called a creative minority of any community at any time of history. Time Rich Cash Poor = Leisure and when this combines with a gentleman (the word which in their greatest hour, which was, Britons meant someone with a specific kind of habit of mind)

Socrates, one of then greatest of Greeks ( Greeks are those people who are like the embryo and genetic code of all Western Civilization and hence by proxy, the discoverer of I-pad. Any Western born man who refuses this Debt to the Greeks needs to be sent to an Eastern gulag) was of the view that a gentleman should know how to play violin, but not too well ! 

The last advice can be easily lost on on many and some may argue against it as why one should not try to learn more and more something.

The answer, in the Greek style is this : Learning a trade too well will mean specialization and too much specialization will not allow the man to have a wholesome understanding of Life and Polis  ( Community for now and for Greeks, their small town or city) and it will not allow for the full flowering of his human potential. 

Consider three trades nowadays in India and see what specialization has done to it :

• Cricket 
• Film (Television and Bollywood)
• Coding / Programming 

In next few months, this blog will take one of the tasks of a true TRCP of each nation : to initiate mass people (who are owned in mind-space by mass-media) into highest quality mind-products so that they can also know, learn and practice the habit of mind. 

As a practical measure, we have decided to take three themes which Indian mass can easily relate to :

• Bollywood or the art-form called film
• The Game of Cricket 
• Yoga and its different variants 

We shall start with Bollywood and will try to achieve the seemingly impossible task : to teach Indian mass how to assess a film. 

The greatest miracle of Indian film industry is this : in spite of 100 years of donkey’s work (and occasionally artistic work), 99% of Indian film-products can be labeled as : A shrewd idiot telling a story full of sound and fury, signifying nothing to clueless and tasteless idiots. 

Our first task is to develop taste for these clueless and idiot film-viewers. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ms. Delight o Life – memories

Ms. Delight is the name of a book I read while a student and found the book again in a College Street bookstore : The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant – first published in 1926. The book (henceforth called as DoL) is a summary sketch, not of philosophies but of greater philosophers of the Western world spanning from Socrates to Bertrand Russel – a time span of of 2500 years. All these great men ( all the philosophers included were male ) had the same experience as I had with Ms. Delight. Actually, I have borrowed from her greatest and oldest admirer Plato to call her as Delight of Life.

I promised to provide a portrait of Ms Delight and from some 700 folio pages, I shall provide how Ms. Delight concludes when one of her greater lovers leave their bodies, i.e.die.  Ms. Delight has declared through the mouth of one of her mercurial lovers : Contemplation of death gives rise to philosophical temperament and its finality is the start of religion. 

 There is a pleasure in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the height of thought into the economic mart of strife and gain

Do you now understand what Ms. Delight told me regarding myself forgetting her in these 20 years ? 

Plato

” … After the feast, the tired revellers came to  wake him. They found that during the night, he had passed from a little sleep to an endless one. All Athens followed him to the grave”

Aristotle 

“..The glory that had been Greece faded now in the dawn of the Roman sun; and the grandeur that was Rome was the pomp of power rather than the light of thought. Then that grandeur too decayed, and that little light went almost lost. For a thousand years darkness brooded over the face of Europe.All the world awaited the resurrection of philosophy’

Francis Bacon

” He had written in his will that these proud and characteristic words :’ I bequeath my soul to God…My body to be buried obscurely. My name to the next ages and to foreign nations.’ The ages and the nations have accepted him

Spinoza

Ernest Renan speaking about Spinoza in 1882 : The truest vision ever had of God, perhaps came here”

Voltaire

At the French Academy, at the close of the sitting, he said “Gentleman, I thank you in the name of the alphabet’ to which the Chairman, Chastellux replied – ‘And we thank you in the name of letters’. He was refused Chirstian burial in Paris….In 1791, the National Assembly of the triumphant Revolution forced Louis XVI to recall Voltaire’s remains to the Pantheon. On this tombstone, only three words were necessary

                                                                     HERE LIES VOLTAIRE 

Immanuel Kant

…Germany lost Goethe, Hegel and Beethoven. It was the end of an epoch, the last fine effort of Germany’s greatest age.

Schopenhauer

In an age when all the great seemed dead he preached once more the ennobling worship of heroes. And with all his faults he succeeded in adding another name to theirs

Friedrich Nietzsche

He died in 1900. Seldom has a man paid so great a price for genius.

 

The Case of a Nobel Laureate of Bengali Origin

In 2008 /9, I raised a query in the Bengali Cultural ezine Pentasect. The query was

What is the motivation – the deepest personal motivation of Prof. Amartya Sen’s engagement with Bengal, interactions with Bengali people, hob-nobbing with the then ruling party (and its extension : the Government of West Bengal) and also :  writing in local newspapers of Bengal on economic and contemporary issues. 

1. I reasoned: Prof Sen remains many ways unique and suffice to say that he is perhaps the only living Bengali who can talk with Indian Premier Dr. Manmohan Singh by his first name. Also, a Master of Trinity and Lamont Professor needs no further intro in the learned circles of the Anglo-Saxon world, even now: not in their best of times.  I compared these ‘contemporary Bengal’ engagements of Prof Sen with a question: ‘Why does a man accustomed to drinking Dom Perino or Vermouth with their accompaniments suddenly takes high interest in drinking বাংলা ধেনো?’ 
2. I tried to answer, following Nirad C Chaudhuri’s analysis on the same question on Tagore. I argued this is a very common frailty of all great Bengalis and they suffered for it. Tagore was its most visible sufferer and now it seems Prof Sen. Nirad summarized this: অযোগ্য স্বজাতির প্রতি মোহ – a kind of irrational attachment to one’s own community, overlooking its incompetence and worthlessness. I think Prof Sen also started suffering from this and it happens generally as one grows older. Tagore said, while young: রেখেছ বাঙালী করে, মানুষ করনি and আমি তোমাদেরই লোক, while he was older.
3.  My friend, a very sharp man, a Mukherjee with unadulterated bloodline for generations (and being proud and arrogant about it )  and based in Calcutta added : Prof Sen found  (like Tagore in a sense) out the capriciousness of fame and influence, more so in the West. This made him seeking some refuge in Indraprastha (Delhi) but the Delhi-wallahs found him too refined, too academic and too liberal. More important: no direct connection with votes. Hence, now left is the surname only. Bengal where the previous regime was having not a single intellectual beacon of Prof Sen’s magnitude. Hence the need-based contract and the severe down-gradation, almost tragic minus the grandeur  on the part of Prof Sen and remarkable up-gradation and free gift on the part of the then ruling regime.

Few days back, a report from leading Bengali daily Ananda Bazar Patrika vindicated this Bhattacharyya and the Mukherjee. The summary is this : A minister of previous regime is being asked about the appointment of certain Bhattacharyya (now in custody and interrogated for felony and fraud by CID) who was told to be recommended by Prof Sen to this minister. What Professor Sen says is immaterial. What the minister says is most significant: He says that Prof Sen is very busy and travels all over and he has no intention of dragging a great man like Prof Sen into controversy. He will remind Prof Sen for sure when he meets him in person.

In effect, the minister, very shrewdly now becomes the arbiter of Prof Sen’s actions and integrity and veracity of his actions. The Minister cannot be blamed. He is doing what is an opportunity and a perfect half-volley: Controller of controversy related to a Nobel Laureate of Bengali origin and there are only 2 such names in the whole history of Bengal. The Minister has everything to gain and the Nobel Laureate has everything to lose.

Why the situation has come to such a pass? Would any Minister of any state or central government inIndiacan even meet a Master of Trinity or Harvard Professor without proper protocol?  And what we see here: a Nobel Laureate’s name and integrity being commented and controlled by a deposed minister of an impoverished state of India?

The answer: অযোগ্য স্বজাতির প্রতি মোহ – a personal weakness clouding the scholar’s judgment.

In the deepest level, this phenomenon was called ‘skin-disease’ by Srila Prabhupada. Just because I have a Bengali (or Amercian, or German or Indian etc…) body, I have some special attraction for such ‘bodies’ and extensions related to this body. Aham Mameti – Me and mine and from this grows the মোহ and from this মোহ and unclean darkness, one loses one’s intelligence, judgment gets clouded and in extreme case : buddhi-nash and buddhi-nashat pranashyati.

The bona-fide acharyas of Bengal and everywhere are unanimously ordering every  man and woman of  talent and potential   : You are not this body. Come out of this illusion of me and mine and skin-disease of body and bodily extensions. These bodily-knots will be all dissolved in death.

In the words of Srila Prabhupada : Don’t be a fool and rascal.  Come to the platform of knowledge :

Tamoso ma jyotirgamaya.

 

The Vengeance of History : Revolutionaries of 70s in Bengal

As an editor of Pentasect, I  have come across many writers / poets in their 50s who have been ‘revolutionaries’ or harbouring revolutionary sentiments while they were in the 20s in the wild and mythical seventies in Bengal. I say mythical because except some sentimentalism (common in Bengal) and passionate but hopelessly superficial, there is no commentary of that important age in the  history of Bengal.

I had written a book called An Intimate History of Bengal and while writing the book, I did my research and could not come across any seminal documentary of that period. However, I am in complete agreement with Taine about one of the symptoms of any political revolution : Every revolution strengthens the power of the state. The excess of seventies in Bengal gave rise to Jyoti Basu as a leader who ruled like a dictator for more than two decades  – unchallenged either from his party, from the voters and from any situation it seems. In terms of performance, it appears that there is nothing to be written except for the extra-ordinary length of the innings. 

Revolutionary I 

This young man somewhere in his late forties was a very active man in his teens and idolized the revolutionaries. Now, he works for a large corporation as a marketing agent and travels in and around Calcutta. The ‘revolutionary-turned’ marketeer is not very happy with the rise of non-Bengali capital and muscle in and around Calcutta and now wishes a Bal Thakre like personality in Bengal. Method : Anonymous email campaigns, chain letters and targetting impressionable young men. He is convinced that there are many such oppressed Bengalis and they will respond to this. Then ? Then there will be reinstatement of Bengalis in the positions of power and influence. 

The revolutionary completely overlooks the question as why Bengalis lost this power and influence.

More important : His own bread and butter comes from such a company which he is trying to overthrow or at least trying to regulate through the mandate of the ‘son of the soil’

Revolutionary II 

Very aristocratic and man endowed with poetic sensibilities. A genuine believer. Very active in cultural movements and left-leaned politics. Now at 50s and works for networking marketing and financial advising. In a painful co-habitation with his past. Heartbreak and more important : a suspicion as whether the dream of revolution in his 20s – to change the order – the holiest of the holy past, whether that itself was a lie or deception ?

The revolutionary finds confusion, non-clarity and desertion from the ranks – old comrades now unrecognizable and he is critical of human nature itself.

He finds his colleagues now, entering monster malls with wife, children and coming out with a mindless glee of consumption or suspended consumption in their face. Enstupidited and insipid. 

Conclusion 

Both revolutionaries are trying to find meaning into an eternal problem by trying to keep then within some limit : Bengal, Capitalism, Communism and so on. 

Here is what a text of 5000 years back has to say 

1. The strife in material world will never cease and the greatest deception is to make an equal society by force, propaganda and dream. This ‘deception’ can be considered as larger animals gathering smaller animals for an agenda. Modern historians term this is ‘managed opposition’. All so called revolutionaries are suspect of either being a psychopath, a change agent, a useful idiot, a plainly low intelligent person, a malcontent, an envious person, a person greedy to be a controller – Isha , defying all controllers and hence the supreme controller,the Lord Himself. Hence all revolutionaries defy God or any higher controller except the ‘exploiter / imperialist / state /’ which he is trying to take over. Hence all revolutionaries are atheists and has been responsible for savageries which is the hidden movers of our modern political history. These revolutionaries and their actions  – in power or off power have re-barbarized Bengal in bare 30-40 years. 

2. All fruits of revolution any revolutionary is promising are all related with the body – made up of five elements and the mind. With the end of the body the fruits will be finished.  A revolutionary might help you get a position of power, influence and even an equal society to live but there is no successful revolution heard against old age, disease and death. One of the greatest revolutionaries of last hundred years demonstrate this in his mausoleum in Moscow by providing low intelligent crowd a spectacle seen not since Egyptian Pharaohs. Now, after death what happens, no revolutionary knows. They think that its all finished and this gives them the will and the sanction to commit anything within the revolutionary moral. And this moral is flexible and corruptible. 

Hark ye, all revolutionaries of Bengal, if you are so much fond of change and revolution, go for inner revolution. Look inside and find out. Ask the first question of being human : Athato Bramhajingasa

If you continue this, your presence, your very presence will change men and women 2000 years head, what to speak of now. 

Ye Bengalis, just contemplate on the Life and Times of 2 Bengalis you know or must have heard : Mahaprbahu Sree Chaitanya and Srila Prabhupada. 

 

 

 

The Eternal Test to find a spiritual guru (sadguru)

Recently, I had some conversations with few talented people who find that they had been in a cult and whom they thought to be a spiritual master is essentially a fraud in the subtle mode. Many are devastated and undergoing a process of cleansing. It is very hard and soul-churning.

Many are now asking : How did I fall into this trap when there were tender shoots of doubt ? Is there any way to know who is a true spiritual master and who is not ? How do I know ?

I will repeat an eternal test to find a true spiritual Master. This is also the only test. Here is the chain of that test :

1. For those who has been fortunate to come to the platform of enquring about the self, the first commandment : In order to understand the self, one has to approach a self-realized Master submissively, enquire from him and serve him. He can guide you because he has seen the nature of the truth or self. Sad means eternal and all true masters are eternal. A-sad means temporary and our body, mind, intelligence and all material achievements are temporary and a-sad. A sad-guru hence has nothing to do with a-sad.

2. A sad-guru is part of an eternal chain and draws His authority from that disciplic succession. He does not concoct something of his own mind. He does not speculate. He does not transact on material plane. He is the custodian of knowledge and does not create any new knowledge. Any guru claiming to create knowledge is a false teacher. A-sad  knowledge can be created or recreated. The eternal knowledge or gyana is beyond mind and can come only through disciplic succession starting from the Supreme Absolute Truth.  This Truth is defined simply : That which is the birth place of everything – janmadi asya yatah.

3. A sad-guru reconfirms the revealed scriptures instead of concocting scriptures. He carries the same eternal message even though the disciplic succession may have millions of gurus in billions of years. Sad-gurus are the checksum of the eternal knowledge.

4. Sad-guru is transcendenatal to material nature – means although he appears to be like a person with body like us but he is an OSD – Office on Special Duty appointed by the Supreme Lord. A sad-guru never never claims to be the Lord or one with the Lord. He is a dear servant of the Lord and has come to carry us to Godhead – to his Master’s Home – the eternal home of us.

5. The greatest sign that a guru can be a fraud is the widespread claim by the guru and his deluded followers : I am God. I am the Supreme Lord. I am the Lord Incarnate. Foolish men accept this because of lack of knowledge. This is the greatest spiritual offense.

6. A sad-guru is eternally connected to the unbroken disciplic succession and is eternally aware of it. He is always in reverence to His guru and all respect to a sad-guru is an offering to the Supreme Lord and he is authorized to carry this to the Lord Himself. A sadguru never accepts anything for himself. Like a loyal servant, he accepts all the honours for his Lord. Any guru who is not clear about his guru and the disciplic succession is a show-man at best and fraud at the worst.

7. A sadguru is not interested in miracles and  mystic opulences. However, being a servant of the Supreme Lord or the Supreme Absolute Truth – Yogeshwara – miracles and mystic opulences manifest around him. However, the greatest mystic power he manifests is his power to make us realize our self. There is no other business of a guru except making us self-realized.

I have just done some sales-man ship for Srila Prabhupada and this post is like worshipping the Ganges by Ganges water. The above is learnt from his work only.

When Lord Jesus said about the message he was delivering – Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away.

This ‘my’ is not that of the body we know as Jesus of Galilee but his eternal relationship – a special one of the disciplic succession.

Dont be in delusion. Dont settle for a cheap guru. If we are sincere – as antaryamin – the Lord will make sure we can approach one of his authorized representative.

The sign of a sadguru is illumined in the prayer below :

agyana timirandhakarasya gyana-anjana-salakya

chakshur-unmillitang jena tasmoi sri gurbe namo

[ I was in deepest darkness of ignorance. My gurudeva has opened my eyes with the torch of knowledge. My obesiances to my Spiritual Master]

 

 

The place called office

In a mtero, it takes 15-20% of the income to commute to office in case you dont take public transport.

In a relatively low cost city like Calcutta, keeping a vehicle and driving some 600 km (office commute only) per month will cost $ 400+ per month. One taxi driver gave me the break-up

1. Cost of Driver = INR 6000 per month

2. Cost of parking / garage = INR 1000 per month

3. Maintenance = INR 2000 pm

4. Cost of Capital / Servicing debt = INR 7000 [ for a mid segment car]

5. Fuel Cost = 40 Ltrs of Fuel per month = INR 3000

6. Insurance and Tax = INR 1000 per month

Total = 20,000 per month.

It is not very easy nor safe  to drive one’s own in a city like Calcutta and cutting driver’s salary is not a judicious thing.

In case of a per month income of INR 60,000 –> this is 30% of the total income.

 Strange !

 

Teachers of Bengal – an extinct species ?

Five hundred years back during Mahaprabhu Sri Chaitanya’s time, Navadip of Bengal was considered a kind of Oxford for students from different parts of India. Another six centuries back, we are informed that Acharya Shankar’s spiritual master Sripada Govindapada was from Gauda – present Midlands of West Bengal. Another eight or nine centuries back when Chinese student Hien-sang came to Nalanda, he mentioned about high level of learning and teachers of Gauda-desha / Bengal.

During British Raj, teachers of Bengal – even in material and secular subjects were legends elsewhere. Bengali communists may note that their grandfathers were not taught a censored version of Keats, Shelley or Newton’s Principia by the ‘imperialist’ government. In spite of all the faults and shortcomings of WEM (White European Men), the grandsons of the Presidency College’s most celebrated alumni need to remind themselves this fact. There lies the only chance of any re-birth.

I read a letter to the editor (in ABP) from a distinguished alumni of Presidency (Class of 1964) where the alumni compares the teachers of his time and the present variant. He also speaks of the peasnatry of the current students.  The comparison is devastating. In 1990s  while I nurtured a dream to be a student there but a cursory look at the notice board ( same time I procured a Folio of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of Roman Empire from the boi-para) and it convinced me that the institution has become more of a chandimantap with the roof being of British concrete. 

Why so ?

Because in a communist / socialist system where equality is the Holy Grail more easily understood by the masses (yes – masses – the lump of humanity which has never spoken and will never speak and need a leader to be guided)  and rarely praticed in its most effacious version by the leaders. In such an environment, a teacher is a functionary of the state, nothing else.

Hence a teacher in such a system can be an organizer, a Marxist intellectual, an activist, a debator, a social change agent, an administrator, representative of the dictator of the proletariat, a local/district  committee member, a Government employee like a clerk, member of an Union, closer/distant  to the Party office, reformer, dreamer, managing local Puja, blood donation, picnic  BUT not a teacher……

All these above roles suck all the vitality – biological and intellectual of the poor soul and he / she remains really lobotomized, metaphorically speaking.

The best of the lot,  being victim of this vicious role-mix demand left the geography with a bitter but painful heart. The mediocre did the waltz with political power with the incentive being suitable transfer, grants and more or less the pocket change for a professor in a proper University in West during their best of times (Mr. Nirad C Chaudhuri has documented this in his Bengali essays). Dr. Watson while analysing the veneration of a Scotland Yard functionary towards Mr. Sherlock kept a sentence to be pondered by all : An average person knows nothing above himself. A man of talent immediately recognizes true genius when he finds one. I command every Bengali born between 1970 – 1990  in Bengal to reflect on this.

The average in Bengal is institutionalized. The talented are enstupidited. The genius has shun the womb of Bengal for quite some time. There is a grand epigram in Kaviraj Goswami’s Chaitanya-Charitamrita. Adavita Charaya – a philosopher-teacher of Navadip in fifteenth century used to offer tulsi and sandal woods to the Lotus feet of the Supreme Lord Vishu with the heartfelt prayer for his coming into the world. Why ? To deliver people from ignorance and stupidity. Night after night, acharya cried and prayed for Lord to appear. On what assurance ? Because of Lord’s eternal  promise to an Indian prince 50 centuries back  : I will appear in each millenium for re-establishment of true religion and punishing the miscreants.

And the Lord listened to his prayer. Mahaprabhu appeared  as patitpavana and brought Bengal in the orbit of Civilization again. His associates or parshads – six goswamis went to Vrindavana and for the benfit of people created literatures.  What literature ? That which delivers us from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge for all men of all time. The Last Great Teacher Bengal, the self-effulgent Vedic Acharya – one of the greatest teachers of whole human history in this planet-  of jagat-guru status and according to some scholars – a saktya-vesha avatara of the Supreme Lord Himself – we are remembering the glories of  Srila Prabhupada.

When Prabhupada was sailing to New York to execute the Order of his Spiritual Master or Guru Maharaj – a journey and its outcome seem to be a mircale in itself now, Asoke Mitra was writing Bangladesh 1969 in Calcutta -a prophetic essay on the re-barbarization of Bengal mainland that will follow for three decades and continuing…. 

The worst of the lot will be mentioned in history after a long time when there may be their grandsons again, in some blissful moments become aware of it. The wait starts now.

In Nuremberg trial, a contrite German said : Thousand years hence, the sins of Germany will not be forgotten.

In thousand years hence, we may be in a position to assess the crime committed in pushing Bengal into an age of intellectual darkness. But this may never take place. Why ? A supreme wordsmith genius of Bengal told us long back

দেহের মুত্যুর রেজিষ্টার রাখা হয়, আত্বার হয় না

I hope that in Bengal somewhere, some acharya is praying sincerely with full surrender to the Lord to intervene again.

My obesiances to the feet of that mahatma of Bengal – the great teacher – such a teacher’s feet makes the earth holy.

The Beast Rising in Calcutta

Calcutta mainstream media – both print and electronic, I was mortified to find is talking about a ‘bold new actress’ who performed something on screen so revolutionary that dogs in the Calcutta streets are suing for copyright violation !

Then I heard panelists in TV discussing Kama Sutra and some women actresses supporting lesbianism and other deviancies becuase WHO has certified it. Is WHO the authority  deciding what is deviancy and what is healthy ? But I forgive them. I also remain thankful that even forty years of communism induced feminism could not make women here completely degenerated. Bengal’s legacy of Tantric, Buddhistic and Vaishnav tradition saved us from complete degeneration. But the Beast is Rising.

In 2006, I wrote a book called The Wordsmith Sutras and I quote a sutra from there

Subliminal Messages: You have an embedded foreground and background processor unit inside you

One of the most-subtle, hard-to-detect mind control methods. Advertisers, high finance and high politics, media, control-freaks use this technique to influence us without our direct knowledge. This technique lowers down inhibitions and implants acceptance of something which normally is abominable.

Our cognition processes both in foreground and in background and even while shutdown (sleep). Three examples:

1. Many soaps and tele-serials portray men or male characters as inefficient, indecisive, and incompetent and some are contemptible. The subliminal message is to create a general derision about men or typecasting among young and impressionable females.
2. Many contraceptive emergency pills are being advertised in both print and electronic media with a front message of convenience (from abortion) and safety (from a botched one).

But there are a set of powerful subliminal messages:   there are ways now to get away from responsibility. Since such a sexual encounter is one-time affair, it can occur many times. It never tells the hazards of such pills.

1. Item numbers: Suddenly we woke up to find that films need at least an item number which simply means a salacious nautanki. The gulf between heroine and bamboo/vamp is being made thinner and thinner.

The subliminal message is to get whoring / flesh business as a career – an acceptance.

Nobody can make you anything without your consent. Just like eating something means acceptance, be careful what is eaten for mind.  

The actress and the media rascals dont know that they are sheer instruments for a cause of which they have no idea and this qualification through ignorance makes them where they are. Or being chosen. Or being used as a useful idiot.

Let me be now brutal to all these Bengalis with whom I do share a bodily relation : Will you sleep peacefully if your 20+ daughter going out at night to be a stripper in Park Street ?

Will you be dancing in joy if your daughter / sister / wife is an actress of such bold movies ?

Will you tell everyone via an email that your daughter / sister / wife is in that flick which has the most number of hits in yougtube  ?

Be sincere to answer this.

And I tell to all Bengali Women, the race of my mother : You all have a mystic potency in you – gifted by the Supreme Lord. This potency you can use to make us gods here or you can make us animals here. The power works both ways and equally potent. But as a spirit soul, you have the independence to make the decision as how you will use it.

Ja devi sarbhabhuteshu Vishnu-Mayeti Sabdita

Namostasmai, Namostasmi, Namostasmi Namo Namo.

Major Teachers of Humanity

Not a single major teacher of humanity has told that you can be happy in the material world.

Lord Buddha : Nirvana is the cessation of desire and that is the greatest goal of life. [ 250 BC]

Acharya Shankar : The Brahman is the only Truth, the world is an illusion. The greatest aim of life is to realize the Brahman. [8th century]

Lord Jesus : This world is like a bridge, not make a house on it [ 15 AD ]

Lord Sree Krishna Chaitanya : Surrender unto the Lotus feet of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna to realize your eternal relationship with the Lord.  There is no other way in this Age of Kali other than chating the Holy name of the Lord.[16th century ].

Srila Prabhupada : If we are interested to know the Supreme Absolute Truth, we need to be cleansed from the material contamination. The most effective means in the current age of Kali is to chant the holy name of the Lord – Hare Krisna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare [ 20th century]

Any teacher of humanity (how popular, how well connected, how great, how many twitter follower, how charming…) who does not repeat what these major acharyas have told is a false teacher and is a spiritual criminal committing the highest offense.  These ‘false teachers’ want us to make animals.

Srila Prabhupada has given us an acid test to find such a false teacher : Any teacher who speaks other than what is in the disciplic succession with the Supreme Lord as the first spiritual master is hovering in the mental platform and like a blind claiming to lead us.

Gurur sakshad parambrhman tasmoi sree gurube namo

[ I surrender unto the Lotus Feet of the Guru who is the direct representative of the Supreme Brahman]

The Student Loan bubble (Translation from India)

Previous to anti-biotics, syphilis was a killer – silent and sure for young males in Europe. After a century, a more deadly killer in Europe and US is student loan. Just like a disease, this is spreading to India as well. There is no anti-biotic in sight for this except the complete collapse of the system itself.

Never in human history – considering we have some 5000+ years of recorded history, education of young men and women needed so much loan as we find in last decade and half. Governments have entered in this market and thus distorting it completely. I heard from a very senior bank officer in India that it can be career damaging for a bank officer to refuse a student loan even if there are genuine concerns in terms of repayment.  Since I am no economist but a translator, let me translate

” I see in front a completely ullu-looking fellow fidgeting some device in his hand. A gilded peasant with an I-pod. His father, a middle aged man is being convinced that once he gets a B.Tech degree paper DTP-ed in a A4 sheet with some symobols and seals from some private college somewhere, he can make his life. The loan sought is INR 20 Lac. Median salary for a start-up engineer in the market is INR 3 Lac that too if its in a city. The bank officer, after a brief interview with the student finds his mathematical and general abilities not very impressive. He barely understands interest rates, compound interest, inflation and median. What he is anxious is to get the money sanctioned so that he can get into the lush campus with so many pretty little things and thongs. But loan has to be sanctioned. The Bank Officer cannot do much. Nationalized banks are after all for the nation – to satisfy the citizens !”

A community of students in US is waking up. I see some ‘degree burning videos’ in youtube. There is an increasing awareness among students who find themselves ‘debt-slave’ with a paper degree.

Let us see the situation in India. Again you need translation:

There are three kinds of educational institutions of graduate level in India

• The ‘Billion Busters’ – the IITs and IIMs and such where competition is so high that unless someone is really a superhero, one will give up his ghost by looking at the mathematial chance of it. It is a billion people filter. 99% of such institutions are public funded and technically non-profit.
• The Million Busters – The for-proft private institutions which drew from some vision of a good man or a group of men and maintained a decent standard. A few among them can compete with any institution of the world.
• Marks No Bar Institutions – This is the segment where money is being minted. These institutions are the equivalent of French Revolution for those who have so long been oppressed under the tyranny of examination, benchmarks, scholarship and tests. These institutions can even accept a student with the brain size of a dragonfly and analytic ability as that of a subprime lender. In India, these institutions have replicated the battle cry once we heard in matrimonial market : Caste No Bar.

The last type comes into being like this : (you need translation again) : A medium or upper medium level builder or promoter finds that one needs to have some nice looking building, some government licenses, AC rooms, computer, Wireless etc and marketing. Faculties can always be freelancers and campus recruitment can always be avoided in the name of recession etc. For this builder, there is nothing unknown of starting a college or university, of course, if you are so ancient to demand scholarship or dedeicated teachers. So the process goes like this

1. He already knows how to build standard boxes in concrete. So he does.

2. He is an expert in getting licenses – he gets all licenses to start a college or university.

3. He hires freelancers and knows marketing well as to inflate prices and sell to certain segment

4. He  knows that he has got some four years before his first batch comes out and he makes sure that he is in profit as soon as some 100+ people are enrolled. In a country of billion (I live in a city of 10 million population) 100+ people is cakewalk.

What he gets ?  From a promoter/builder  (are you smelling paint, cement, sound of a mixer…) to that of an educationist ( serene, calm, scholarship…)

What the students get ? Liberation from the tyranny of test, cut-off, qualification and elitism. Entry to the greatest communism : Marks No Bar.

The whole student loan fuels this liberation from the tyranny of cut-off to MARKS NO BAR

 The above translation, in brief but in all its essentials is the current graduate level educational scenario in India.