Sanandana | Centootto | Solomon Steinbett
सानंदना | שלמה
Eight Flowers That Please Lord Shiva:
1. Ahimsa Prathamam Pushpam ~ Non-violence is the First Flower.
2. Pushpam Indriya Nigraham ~ Control of the senses is the Second Flower.
3. Sarva Bhootha Daya Pushpam ~ Being kind towards all living things is the Third Flower.
4. Kshama Pushpam Visheshataha ~ Forgiving is the real special Flower – the Fourth Offering.
5. Shanthi Pushpam ~ Peace is the Fifth Flower.
6. Tapah Pushpam ~ Penance is the Sixth Flower.
7. Dhyanah Pushpam ~ Meditation is the Seventh Flower.
8. Sathyam Ashta Vidha Pushpam ~ Truth is the Eighth Flower.
“At that moment my thoughts were numbed. Within me I felt a new and singular form of life. My being was somehow connected with that of all the creatures that existed about me, with all the shadows that quivered around me. I was in intimate, inviolable communion with the outside world and all created things, and a complex system of invisible conductors transmitted a restless flow of impulses between me and all the elements of nature. There was no conception, no notion which I felt foreign to me. I was capable of penetrating with ease the secrets of the painters of the past, the mysteries of the abstruse philosophies, the ancient folly of ideas and species. At that moment I participated in the revolutions of heaven and earth, in the germination of plants and in the instinctive movement of animals. Past and future, far and near, had joined together and fused in the life of my mind.”
Sadegh Hedayat
“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.”
Isaac Bashevas Singer
Astoreth
“The Bororo Indians, a primitive tribe who live along the Vermelho River in the Amazon jungles of Brazil, believe that there is no such thing as a private self. The Bororos regard the mind as an open cavity, like a cave or a tunnel or an arcade, if you will, in which the entire village dwells and the jungle grows. In 1969 José M. R. Delgado, the eminent Spanish brain physiologist, pronounced the Bororos correct. For nearly three millennia, Western philosophers had viewed the self as something unique, something encased inside a person’s skull, so to speak. This inner self had to deal with and learn from the outside world, of course, and it might prove incompetent in doing so. Nevertheless, at the core of one’s self there was presumed to be something irreducible and inviolate. Not so, said Delgado. ‘Each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment.’ The important word was transitory, and he was talking not about years but about hours. He cited experiments in which healthy college students lying on beds in well-lit but soundproofed chambers, wearing gloves to reduce the sense of touch and translucent goggles to block out specific sights, began to hallucinate within hours. Without the entire village, the whole jungle, occupying the cavity, they had no minds left.”
Tom Wolfe – “Bonfire of the Vanities”
“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”
Isaac Bashevas Singer – “Enemies, a Love Story”
“I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist…I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.”
Isaac Asimov
Leonora Carrington – Mi General Aspirina y Sus Hombres
“Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you…and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky – “The Brothers Karamazov”
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.
“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”
Mohandas Gandhi
“Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”
Tommy Douglas
“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“All money is funny, if you stop to think about it, but no private currency, competing on a free market, could ever be quite so comical (and tragic) as the notes now bearing the magic imprint of Uncle Sam – and backed only by his promise (or threat) that, come hell or high water, by God he’ll make it good by taxing our descendants unto the infinite generation to pay the interest on it. The national debt, so called, is of course, nothing else but the debt we owe the bankers who ‘loaned’ this money to Uncle after he kindly give them the credit which enabled them to make this loan…The system has but one advantage: it makes bankers richer every year. Nobody else, from the industrial capitalist to the ‘captain of industry’ to the coalminer, profits from it in any way, and all pay the taxes, which become the interest payments, which make the bankers richer. If the Illuminati did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them – such a system can be explained in no other way, except by those cynics who hold that human stupidity is infinite.”
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson – “The Illuminatus Trilogy”
Wifredo Lam
“But this brings us to the magical theory of reality.
“Mahatma Guru Sri Paramahansa Shivaji writes: What then are these qualities of which we are so sure? They would not exist without our brains; they would not exist without the cheese. They are the results of the union, that is of the Yoga, of the seer and seen, of subject and object…
“There is nothing here with which a modern physicist could quarrel; and this is the magical theory of the universe. The magician assumes that sensed reality – the panorama of impressions monitored by the senses and collated by the brain, is radically different from so called objective reality. About the latter ‘reality’ we can only form speculations or theories which, if we are very careful and subtle, will not contradict either logic or the reports of the senses. This lack of contradiction is rare; some conflicts between theory and logic, or between theory and sense-data, are not discovered for centuries (for example, the wandering of Mercury away from the Newtonian calculation of its orbit). And even when achieved, lack of contradiction is proof only that the theory is not totally false. It is never, in any case, proof that the theory is totally true – for an indefinite number of such theories can be constructed from the known data at any time.
“If we have this much freedom in choosing our theories about ‘objective reality’, we have even more liberty in deciphering the ‘given’ or transactional sensed reality. The ordinary person senses as he or she has been taught to sense – that is, as they have been programmed by their society. The magician is a self-programmer. Using invocation and evocation – which are functionally identical with self-conditioning, auto-suggestion, and hypnosis – he or she edits or orchestrates sensed reality like an artist.”
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson – “The Illuminatus Trilogy”
Jan Wiegers – Paysage d’hiver Graubünden
As the End of the Days approach, there are two paths that the world could take. The first is filled with kindness and miracles, with the Messiah “given dominion, honour and kinship so that all peoples, nations and languages would serve him; his dominion would be an everlasting dominion that would never pass, and his kingship would never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14) This scenario could be brought at any moment, if we’d just get our act together!
The other path describes the Messiah as coming “humble and riding upon a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). In this scenario, nature will take its course, and society will undergo a slow painful deterioration, with much suffering. God’s presence will be hidden, and his guidance will not be perceivable.
According to this second path, there will be a valueless society in which religion will not only be chided, it will be used to promote immorality. Young people will not respect the old, and governments will become godless.
According to the Talmud, as the Messianic era approaches, the world will experience greater and greater turmoil: vast economic fluctuations, social rebellion, and widespread despair. The culmination will be a world war of immense proportion led by King Gog from the land of Magog. This will be a war the likes of which has never been seen before. This will be the ultimate war of good against evil, in which evil will be entirely obliterated. (Ezekiel ch. 38, 39; Zechariah 21:2, 14:23; Talmud – Sukkah 52, Sanhedrin 97, Sotah 49)
The key is to maintain the hope of redemption.
Here are just some of the symptoms of Kali Yuga (the age of the daemon Kali, not to be confused with the Goddess Kali):
• Avarice and wrath will be common.
• Religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy, and memory diminish with each passing day.
• Sin will increase exponentially, while virtue will fade and cease to flourish.
• People will become addicted to intoxicating drinks and drugs.
• Followers of deviant sexuality will wrest control of the mind from all human beings.
• Weather and environment will degrade with time.
• Many fake ideologies will spread throughout the world.
• The powerful people will dominate the poor people.
• Many diseases will spread…
“Given a period of general decline, which we now seem to be in – the Kali Yuga, a phase of plague, famine, and war that has been described as “the end of the end” – what language would the Blessed One skilfully use to resolve the world’s demise? In contrast to the physical reality of his own age, nature itself seems now threatened with extinction. If we believe that, what is the significance of meditative practices in the modern world, particularly when the ‘extinction’ clock reads two minutes to midnight? Can we spend our time in seclusion and contemplation – even if, of course, we are not striving only for our own enlightenment but for all sentient beings as well? Is enlightenment more important than saving the world? Or is enlightenment the only way of saving the world?”
Rudolph Wurlitzer – “Hard Travel to Sacred Places”
Eliezer Sobel – Baal Shem Tov in His Carriage
“And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps; and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders; and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty-four thousand, who were redeemed from the earth.”
Revelation (14:1-3)
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, and LORD OF LORDS. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat on the horse.”
Revelation (19.11-16, & 19-21)
Lord Kalki
“Lord Kalki, the Lord of the Universe, will mount His swift horse Devadatta and, sword in hand, travel over the earth exhibiting His eight mystic opulences and eight special qualities of Godhead. Displaying His unequalled effulgence and riding with great speed, He will kill by the millions those thieves who have dared dress as kings.”
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (12.2.19-20)
The geological rock strata of the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland is believed to be some of the oldest on the planet. Its archaic landscape clearly carries a primeval energy. A 19th century writer, Clara Bloomfield Moore, makes the pertinent observation: “The Himalayas, big and grand as they are, must represent mountains whose rise was a thing of a very ‘recent’ date, geologically speaking. This is proved, because we see rocks belonging to a relatively recent age, appearing as part and parcel of their lofty peaks. Very different is the case with the hills and mountains of, say, north-western Scotland. There you come upon peaks of an age well-nigh coeval with the world’s earliest settling down to a steady, solid, and respectable existence. The Scottish hills are the old, the very old, aristocrats of the cosmical circle; the Himalayas, Alps, and the rest, are the new race whose origin goes not further back than a generation, as it were.” (Keely and His Discoveries, 1893).
Just as there appears to be a common Celto-Vedic racial heritage, so there may also be an energetic vibrational connection between the high Himalayas and the primeval mountain ranges of Scotland, which drew ascetic Brahmins to the former and Druidic magi to the latter.
Barry Dunford – The Celto-Himalayan Connection
“Distance yourself from a falsehood; do not slay the righteous nor injure those who have been declared innocent, for I will not exonerate the wicked.”
The Book of Shemot 23:7
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
Frantz Fanon
“I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos – and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.”
Frantz Fanon – “Black Skin, White Masks”
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
“When you believe in something literally, through your faith you’ll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people, who take them in earnest, sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates.”
Milan Kundera
“There was only one escape for him: to go back to the Torah, the Gemara, the Jewish books. What about his doubt? Even if one were to doubt the existence of oxygen, one would still have to breath.”
Isaac Bashevas Singer – “Enemies, a Love Story”
Marianne von Werefkin – Der Lumpensammler
“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed.”
Proverbs 3
“We now know, as Adam Smith and Macaulay did not, that material progress is implicated in a dialectic of concomitant damage, that it destroys irreparable equilibria between society and nature. Technical advances, superb in themselves, are operative in the ruin of primary living systems and ecologies.
“We no longer accept the projection, implicit in the classic model of beneficent capitalism, that progress will necessarily spread from privileged centres to all men. Indecent superfluities in developed societies coexist with what seems to be endemic starvation over a large part of the earth. In effect, improvement in the chance and duration of individual life as brought on by medical technology has fuelled the cycle of overpopulation and hunger.
“It may be that the coming door opens on to realities ontologically opposed to our sanity and limited moral reserves.”
George Steiner – “In Bluebeard’s Castle”
“Capitalism has not just arrived but has taken over. One feels the presence of huge corporations, of decisions being made way beyond individual discourse, monocultural and global, coded from computers and marketing polls.”
Rudolph Wurlitzer – “Hard Travel to Sacred Places”
“The matter is complex because the components of the third eye are of the same material with which we must search for it. Finding the third eye involves much the same problem as a man searching for his spectacles – without them he can’t see to find them!”
Dr Douglas Baker – “The Opening of the Third Eye”
“The price they paid for their vision was the possession of that vision.”
Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson – “The Illuminatus Trilogy”
“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us.
“I believe there are some people who really do want, if only subconsciously, an end to the world. They want to be spared the responsibilities of maintaining that world, to be spared the effort of imagination needed to realize such a future. And of course, there are other people who want very much to live. I see twentieth century society as a sort of race between enlightenment and extinction.”
Alan Moore – “Watchmen”
Donald Judd
“The source of all phenomena is the mind, and true freedom comes from understanding that the individual mind is fundamentally fallacious.”
Rudolph Wurlitzer – “Slow Fade”
“We believe that an individual must endeavour to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition.”
Frantz Fanon – “Black Skin, White Masks”
After finishing Shiva puja, Guruji sat down to relax, loosening his dhoti slightly as he did so. Goddess of Fate were playing softly in the background and he could feel the cool cosmic glow of the moldovite pressing gently against his third eye. He lit his chilom with a sigh and was once again beset by sorrow at the thought of being alive in a world that was beyond repair.
Sanandana
“Until that night I had often fantasised about redeeming the human species, but it became obvious to me then that the human species didn’t deserve redemption. To do so would actually be a crime. Man was a beast that killed, ravaged, and tortured not only other species but its own as well. The other’s pain was his joy, the other’s humiliation his glory.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer – “Love and Exile”
Hedy Lamarr
“It doesn’t take a genius to see that we come closer to the apocalypse with each passing day. It is not a question of if it will happen, it is only a question of how. Our time on this failing world is too short to base our worldviews on the slander of overpaid liars on a television screen…We as a species are too busy basking in our own self-satisfied glory to see that our world is falling apart. Our accomplishments count for nothing when we are incapable of survival.”
Naut (from Ethereal)
Marcus Garvey
“What separated me – distinguished me from other people was crucial; what no one said, what no one could say but myself, that it was my task to say.”
André Gide
“Justice, once violated, demolishes itself; if preserved, it preserves; therefore justice must not be transgressed lest violated justice should annihilate us.”
Manusmriti (Laws of Manu)
“You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”
Nikola Tesla
Valley of Flowers
• You must not be guilty of unjust verdicts…
• You must not slander your own people…
• You must not bear hatred for your brother in your own heart…
• If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him…you must count him as one of your countrymen and love him as yourself – for you yourselves were once strangers in Egypt.
Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
“My God, keep my tongue and my lips from speaking deceit, and to them that curse me let my soul be silent, and like dust to all. Open my heart in Your Torah, and after Thy commandments let my soul pursue. As for those that think evil of me speedily thwart their counsel and destroy their plots. Do this for Thy name’s sake, do this for Thy right hand’s sake, do this for the sake of Thy holiness, do this for the sake of Thy Torah. That Thy beloved ones may rejoice, let Thy right hand bring on salvation and answer me… May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Eternal, my rock and my redeemer.”
Amidah – Concluding Meditation
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Sarah Williams – from “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil”
Aloïse Corbaz
All lower (baser) frequencies register in the physical world (karma), only the higher frequencies (qualities) register in the spiritual world (dharma).
Sanandana
“If you look at things as they are, he told himself, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one’s conduct. Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater. What happens ultimately, you do not know. In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters, nothing whatsoever…”
Khushwant Singh – “Train to Pakistan”
Jonathan Shearer – Strathglass
Sanandana | Solomon Steinbett 