GateLessGate Magazine

Cerfontaine

August 4, 2006 at 6:26 am (Cerfontaine)

A cherished centuries old French wine, an exotic damsel from the tribes of the far flung Bohemain islands, a sonnet lost in the yellowing pages of musical history, a king long forgotten…..

andree

Born into the world of fine fashion,Cerfontaine is the baby of designer par excellence, Rudhra Cerfontaine. Marrying Oriental image with the European sense of style and shape, the Cerfontaine collection is a range that satisfies the burning desires of a fashionista.

Natural fabrics are the heart and soul of this designer’s collection. Textured cottons, silks and linen with fine sensations are a pleasure to wear, and aesthetic beauty the central theme.

Intricate detailing of Banjara stiches and decorative abala work are central to the range. Embroidered kurtis in silk linen, tops with lace trimmings and leather strings, drawstring trousers with the exotic Banjara stitch and moth- er of pearl buttons, all convey a sense of elegance and fun. Tibetan shirts in cotton with tie ups and tie dye shirts with bright tattoo prints… makes one want to wear it instantly and walk out with the air of a celebrity.

Creativity flows in the form of intricate, innovative Kaatyawad inspired prints that have been crafted by Rudhra himself. These take the shape of silk spaghetti strap dresses, shirts and skirts embellished with abala. Muted earthy tones, ivory, sand, mustard, coal and brick… are some of the major players in the colour palate of this collection .

“A woman or man is perfect just as they are. Imperfection is beautiful,” says Rudhra. What can one say to that except… welcome to a world of incredible clothing that you can call your own.

By Shruti Kothari

www.cerfontaine.it

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Glastonbury Festival

August 3, 2006 at 9:14 am (Glastonbury Festival)

Glastonbury Festival is the MOTHER of all festivals…….it is in the magical area of Somerset, England, and it has to be experienced to be understood……it is so big that it feels like a new community, a voyage of discovery in music, art and culture…..with 150,000 people of all colour, age and lifestyle… music from every genre imaginable…. Dance, rock, chill, retro, commercial, house, latin, break beat, world, pop, indie, acoustic, grunge, drum & bass, R & B, jazz, trance, spiritual, the styles are endless… music to blow your mind wide open!!!

The festival evolved over the last decade by Michael Eavis, from a simple hippie gathering with rock music, to one of the biggest, commercial and most diverse music culture festivals in Europe, with tickets selling out in one week, at over £100 (8000 rupees) a throw!!!! On ebay tickets can go for up to £500 (40000 rupees)!!!!!

Photos of the festival are incredible…it seems like a whole city is pulsating on the Somerset fields with so much life, I mean 150,000 of anything is huge, let alone all those people, their cars, tents, shops, lights, stages, restaurants, bars, dance arenas, cinemas, tipees, sculptures, exhibits of art and madness, stalls of every description…….

So how does the festival spend that £10 million pounds (80 crore!) in entrance money I hear you ask!! Well, much is spent on security and constructing a huge outer perimeter fencing around the entire festival area to make sure people can only enter with tickets…. Years before, people would enter free by climbing over the ditches and hedges around the site, then it became large fences, and now of course it’s a huge, high fence, patrolled with security in 4×4 vehicles and dogs, and impossible to climb over without breaking bones…

I arrived straight from sunny hot Ibiza to a cold day to drive to the festival……the rain arrived that evening, and didn’t stop for 24 hours……The whole festival was under water…..unimaginable pictures of mud, mud and more mud..!!! The dance village where I was playing had to be evacuated…. lightning hit a stage and wiped out the electricity…. We had no sound system, no crowd and nowhere to hide from the rain!!! My shelter was the geodesic dome from ID Spiral…..

We were lucky that by evening the rain had died down enough for the power to be switched back on, people allowed back onto the dance village field, and we were able to continue…it really was amazing to see the energy of the team go so low with the weather, but still soldier on and make the best of a really mad, bad and messy-messy situation!!!! Slowly the fields filled with people determined to have a good time…no matter what!!!

The music continued…the crowd filling the fields with positive energy… the main stage was awesome…people dancing in the rain……the main DJ was suspended in a cage on a wall on the main stage… saw Fat Boy Slim kick ass!!!!
So much to see…you just could not take it all in…the photos, the reports of the festival just can’t describe the energy…it just has to be experienced… whether you go to dance, to meditate, to work, or party with your friends…Glastonbury is such a personal voyage of discovery… even though it has become such a huge commercial festival, you will meet magic people that may change your life forever, and open your mind…………

Ma Faiza was born in Africa and is of Indian origin. She evolved as a DJ in London, and is based in Pune, India. She is a DJ, an Artist, Producer and Head of A & R for Masti Music. She writes for several international publications, and she DJ’s globally, madly travelling around the world, participating in some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sound, vision and experience…
Ma Faiza shares her own personal adventures DJing at some of the biggest parties in Europe this summer…

www.mafaiza.com

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

Mutribo – Riding High

August 3, 2006 at 8:19 am (Riding High)

How did you come to India, to Osho?

I had studied French and European literature at University, but my first sort of sensitising process was through novels. That was where I began exploring the inner world. When a girlfriend came back from California with the book ‘Tantra, Spirituality and Sex’, I remember taking the book around with me on London buses, and for a long time I was not able to put it down. I had no idea about enlightenment. I wasn’t connected with India at all. it was the first time for me that Osho had introduced this concept of enlightenment and related it to Jesus. I came from a Christian background, and I thought Jesus was a one-off. I thought, okay, it happened two thousand years ago, but as far as I knew, it never happened again, and bad luck to everyone else. Osho was the first person who not only said that Jesus was in this state of enlightenment, but also described this living history that had happened in the East over the centuries, of people on their spiritual search and the eventual outcome if you were lucky, of enlightenment. When I was at school and read about Jesus’ persecution, I remember saying to myself then – If I had been there I would have recognized him. Now two thousand years later, two thirds of the world is worshipping this guy, but how come they missed him when he was alive? So when I read these words of Osho I understood the context of spiritual seeking and enlightenment. I was freaked out that Osho was going to die before I got there and I wouldn’t be able to fulfill this promise I had made inside myself, that if ever I was in that opportunity, I would be able to see it. I wouldn’t miss it. And it all started like that….

What is your background as a filmmaker and how did that carry on into your sannyas life? I did a one-year film course in London in ’73 and then went to the United States. I spent 2 years in the United States working with all sorts of small feature films, documentaries and advertising. I then came back to London and started my own company making music videos, advertisements, commercial and industrial films. And then at the end of ’78, I came to Poona, India – I came in the second wave. Osho left Bombay on March 21st 1974 and moved to Poona. It was a very intense place. Everyone had given up something to be there. Osho represented a possibility that other social, therapeutic, political movements had manifestly failed to deliver. A lot of the people who came in the 70’s were people who had been involved in the political, social, student movements in the late 60’s in Europe; where Paris was within one day of being taken over by students, and there was a real sense of “Wow, we could change this planet through politics, through social change” And then the Governments got together, and they clamped down and arrested all the leaders. So by the beginning of the 70’s you had a lot of people asking, “What was that about?” We finally thought we were going to create heaven on earth, and suddenly everyone’s arrested and it’s worse than before. I was at University during those years, so when you came through that and suddenly you met Osho, he was there saying – “You were right. It is possible but you were just going about it in the wrong way. Forget about the outside. Go in.” That was the message that I got from it – “Turn your focus around. Use the same energy. Come here. I know how to do it.” People came from all walks of life. When you collected everyone’s story and how they arrived around Osho, it would be an Encyclopedia. I had been training as a therapist in those days, so I was hot to do all the tough groups. The Encounter Group was something where you took your life in your own hands, with no holds barred. As it turned out that when I got there Osho gave me ‘Centering’ which was a normal group that started people off. He also gave me ‘Rebalancing’ and ‘Vipassana’ and I was rather disappointed because I wanted to get in the middle of it and get into the real cathartic, emotional groups and he sent me to do meditation, which I found to be the most difficult thing I had ever done in my life. I returned to London to close my film business and then came back. When I was there I wrote him a question, and I said, “Look I’m training to be a therapist but I also make films. Please, can you guide me; can you tell me where I should go?” And I got the answer back from him – “If you like therapy, fine. But film would be very useful.” So I took that as a ‘Drop the therapy, and continue with films’ There was a guy from New Zealand called Hasyo, and he had a very basic piece of video equipment with which he filmed a few of Osho’s discourses in 78-79, which had Osho with a green beard because the camera wasn’t very good.! Then in 1980, Sheela, brought the first decent video equipment that we had and then we started getting into a regular program of filming ‘Discourse’ until the last English discourse, which was on March 10th 1981, and the series was called “The Goose is Out”. Osho then basically decided to stop speaking and then we filmed one month of silent Satsangs in Poona. Later when he came back to India, I was still involved with making films. I made “The Manifesto’ and “I leave you my dream”

A special moment with Osho?

When Osho left the body in Jan ‘90, Anando called me in right away to bring the cameras into his room. I was in there alone with him; I don’t know how long it was. I had a suspicion it was a practical joke as he looked so alive. I was filming and going very close with the camera. I thought at any moment he might suddenly go ‘Boo’ and I’d have a heart attack, because of all the Zen stories! He really didn’t look dead, his neck was totally loose, his skin was perfect, and he looked like he always looked, just sleeping. When he left the body, the most touching thing, the deepest that I got that night when we took him down to the Ghats and burned his body, was – “The guy just set everyone free.” I felt at that moment the utter ordinariness that he always insisted he had, that he was, when he was alive. It was so difficult to see; because of his charisma, because of his wisdom, because of his robes, his image. In that moment of death, I saw it. And for me, that ordinariness was there in a way that I could understand, and feel. Also just to see him go out so beautifully. I felt such tremendous gratitude for the way he organized his own departure, and how that left me, as a sannyasin. feeling a tremendous freedom. And I think that was probably the highest moment for me. Only when he was gone could I feel the truth of what he had said before. That here was this guy, just like us.

You have been spending a lot of time in the Himalayas…

For the last 9 years I’ve lived in India, and been to the Himalayas to do fairly long retreats. When you were all meditating, I was filming, and so the one thing I felt I had to go into more deeply was formal meditation. Although filming Osho had its own meditative aspect and was a beautiful experience, where you disappeared in that space. I didn’t want to die without having gone into what he so strongly recommended. I no longer wanted to go off into a beautiful space when I closed my eyes; and then come back to my daily life. I wanted to integrate it; as something spontaneous, alive. And then over a period of time the whole sort of spiritual seeking just stopped. Now I just move with the weather. I don’t have a home. The beauty of these last few years is that everything has become so much more portable. You can carry a whole film studio on an aircraft as hand luggage. I work on projects that have something that grabs me. I don’t make many films. I work sporadically and live a very simple life. Nature itself for me is spiritual. I lived near Manali for 5 years continuously, and Manali is the entrance-way to the travel regions of Spiti, Lahaul and Ladakh. The beauty of it is when you cross the range, is you enter into a totally different culture – the Tibetan Buddhist culture. I’m not much into Tibetan Buddhism, but I like the art, I like the images. I find the people are very open; the way they live together is very organic, very harmonious. Their architecture, their agriculture, the whole spirit of the place has a beauty about it which is similar to Tibet. That’s why people call it ‘Little Tibet’.

Riding High – The Movie

How did the movie – ‘Riding High’ happen?

Dipesh and Ash, friends of mine, had always wanted to go to Ladakh because they had this idea to do bike tours in the Himalayas. And so in 2002, we decided to make the trip and do the initial filming of the trip. My motivation was that I just love the nature up there, I think its one of the most beautiful places I know on the planet and I wanted to have the footage in my archive. Ai, who runs the Spiritual Film Festival in Goa, had seen the promotional version, and wanted to show it for the festival, but I wasn’t happy, it didn’t have enough cohesion, enough of a documentary feel about it. So this year in Goa, Ash and me, we took the material from the different trips and re-edited it into the movie, ‘Riding High’ which was then screened at the film festival in Goa. …tremendous gratitude to Osho and the Commune for allowing me to pursue something that I was interested in, to pursue it around a subject matter that touched my heart. I don’t regret one millisecond of it. The journey with Osho was intense but I like intensity…

www.mutribo.com

www.ridinghightours.com

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Diary of a DJ – Ma Faiza

August 3, 2006 at 8:08 am (Lightmotiv)

Along my travels I have the great gift of experiencing many different forms of “art”………meeting people with such passion to express “something”……using new technologies with old, taking all the tools they need to let us experience a cosmic reality……….One amazing artist I encountered was Mattias Strobl, at Wonderland Open-Air Festival in Germany, and from the first moment I saw his projections, standing in the open, I was mesmerized, I could not stop watching the huge 40metre images projected onto a big white cloth, hug between trees in the forest……Using a projector designed and patented by himself, Mattias drops many different colours and liquids on a glass petri dish containing a water-based clear liquid……..the petri dish can then be rotated at different speeds and in different directions and there is also a small mechanical arm which spins and mixes the liquids in the dish…….. he calls these images “lightmotivs” and they can be up to 50 metres in diameter and can be projected onto the sides of buildings or any white background…………Mega-sized, organic, colourful
free-floating fluid forms that unite or repel before the eye of the beholder, undulating bubbles that touch each other, millions of colours, forms and dynamics magically evolving, taking you on a journey into a whole new universe…… These lightmotivs create light spaces that permit unusual and amazing perspectives that free our optics from the captivity of our inner eye level……….they do not provide any answers, but instead ask questions because it connects levels of perception, and visualises self-organising processes and structures………

Lightmotiv – Contact

Witnessing a lightmotiv is about asking yourself what you see. The flowing forms and colours affect the brain to search for references in recognition . This “cerebral massage” is experienced as contemplation, comparable with looking into the clouds in the sky. It is stepping back and enjoying the beauty of nature …….More than ever before, we are occupied with the desire to recognise structures and regularity of nature, and it is not uncommon for us to fail
because of the new, old chaos of the world. Although in the age of technical reproduction everything seems to be repeatable, there is sometimes still a chance to consciously experience the uniqueness of the moment and become aware of the beauty of nature……… Mattias’s lightmotiv projections are alive and living……..he travels across the globe sharing his lightmotivs in Europe, America, Japan, Turkey and more….. and I have had the great pleasure to share a few dj/vj sets in Germany, London and Turkey with him……. I feel so connected with the lightmotivs……and was inspired to make a music compilation for the lightmotiv DVD………..This project has been in development for the last one and a half years, and we just now have completed a DVD, with Mattias’s images and a magical water-liquid-based chillout-mix, containing many new artists and previously unreleased material from myself and Veet Sandeh….. All the music was made specially to syncronise with the images and a layer of about 50 sounds evolve throughout the mix as the images move and spin, grow and shrink, repel and attract, merge and swirl……and so the music reflects this evolution……….Mattias was the first to agree that this synchronicity of his lightmotivs and the music brings the whole feeling more alive, more present and more dynamic…… From our first meeting I talked about me putting music together for a DVD of his lightmotiv’s, and was so interested in the way all the fluids work within a natural evolution, I ended up picking Mattias’s brain for a couple of hours, both of us sharing that it was a real shame that the music was just not being played with any attention to his images and at dance parties its very hard to find a dj sensitive enough to allow the music to work with the images. Mattias also has permanent installations, and has manufactured fifteen of his projectors at present…..he shares his visionary concepts with art festivals, corporate events, and many psychedelic parties. Check out www.lightmotiv.de and www.tnl.de where you can download some pictures of his art, many small movies with music, purchase the DVD, and get more info….

Check out www.lightmotiv.de and www.tnl.de where you can download some pictures of his art , many small movies with music , purchase the DVD , and get more info

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

www.mafaiza.com

Art and Being – B

August 3, 2006 at 7:45 am (Art and Being)

U can never possess colors because they flow through the forms they describe,
Past the window they are in, beyond the chest that lays them out,
They are not yours, but unfathomed furies longing,
That which lands in the very depth of one,
Just to leave a tracemark of winters dew,
So you know you can always go and forever come back,
To the same moment that never left, just expanded….. light…..

It’s the moon on a sliding scale
Its creating reality the way U see it
Its inventing the life before your dream defined U
A layout of emancipation that has no name…. but colors

The vibration of the master
Picture it….
—————————————————————————————————————

Every painting has its own life
If it stays the same as the last, it means the painter did not grow through the process
He is a machine of expression,

One who has finally digged deep enough in his mind
To know that the machine he carries is his own… But the painter who carries his expression in his own veryness of being,
And through that is a growth unto himself
Bejokes the joke, as a mystic walking through glass,
Be aware of he who does not take his own expression seriously,
But expresses seriosity about it, for the merriment of the many,

Just to laugh within himself of the simplicity he sees, as it is made circumstantial by people who don’t practice being,
his being is his true painting,
the painting is his experience of that in this moment
he is no longer machine but pure organic matter coming from balance of totality… he sees it, he knows it, he is it, hence be a creation unto yourself, create your own destiny

——————————————————————————————————–

Moving through Definite spaces
Shows One the Infinite space
That which is in between
And that which is beyond
The beyond is deep inside
It is beyond that which is not deep inside
All that is not rooted deep inside, in the beyond, is surface
Moving on the surface is tiring
Moving in spacelessness is invigorating energizing fulfilling
Don’t just travel on the surface, move deep inside where
Spacelessness governs your total being

—————————————————————————————————–
U might have purchased my painting but the experience of it is mine,
U just own the result, still if you want to know what u are looking at,
Or even just to feel something when looking,
U have to know loving openness, or U are bound to ask someone else,
if it is made from the core of the self, and then what is it to U?
Just a proof that you could buy something,
From someone who is himself, that does not make you yourself!!!
Once u have all the famous paintings in your room u will know u don’t know the treasure of them all,
Yourself,
And then U know U have nothing,
And then the only question that persists is:
do U have the courage to acknowledge it?
Because only then U can begin that journey called: Integration

Excerpts from the book ‘Art Is’ -by B (Tobias Ginsborg)

visit – www.tantralife.com

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Tantralife – Radha C. Luglio

August 3, 2006 at 7:34 am (Tantralife)

The desire to be extraordinary is a very ordinary desire.
To relax and to be ordinary is really extraordinary

Osho – The Art of Dying.

I was beginning to see how my mind could play tricks on me, because one consequence of becoming a sannyasin was that I began to create an image of myself as a very serious and dedicated seeker. I certainly was totally involved in meditation, doing Dynamic every morning and another technique called ‘Kundalini Meditation’ every evening. I was also experimenting with meditation techniques given by Osho in darshan and in his discourses. But I wasn’t planning on years of discipleship. In fact, I was expecting to become enlightened in a matter of weeks or months. Not surprisingly, the level of tension, seriousness and expectation in me was very high, and I had not yet gathered enough experience to see how such an attitude is itself a hindrance to being ‘loose and natural.’ Fortunately, Osho was available to keep my feet on the ground.
I remember in one of the discourses on Tilopa’s ‘Song of Mahamudra’ I was so completely ‘gone’ that I felt as if I had left my body. I was outside the body. The body was sitting there in total stillness – the back completely straight, not a movement, not a flinch – and at the same time something in me was watching it from the outside. Clearly, this was another good reason to see Osho as soon as I could and tell him about this great spiritual experience. He looked at me and said,”No, no, no, that’s nothing. Just wait a few months, just be here for a while, then I will teach you real astral traveling. Then you will really know what astral traveling means.” For weeks, I was excited. Sooner or later, I was going to learn astral traveling. But then, as time went by, my interest in this esoteric subject faded and I began to see a different purpose in Osho’s response. It became clear how he would create situations that would appeal to our minds so that we would be hooked into staying longer, sitting longer, meditating longer, and in this way come to know – or at least touch – that inner emptiness for which we had made the spiritual pilgrimage to India. The mind is a restless creature that needs a lot of entertainment, so he would sometimes talk about occult powers, or siddhis, as a way of keeping out mental bio-computers engaged. He was not supporting people in learning such things, but playing the rascal with us – tricking our minds into remaining occupied while the real work happened on another plane.
Apart from the time I asked about having a baby, Osho was always laughing at my questions. It didn’t matter what I was saying, whether I had come with a serious problem, or a half-made-up spiritual experience, he was always chuckling, being playful, and dissolving my seriousness with one of his
smiles. Slowly, I understood that humour was one of the most precious keys on my new-found Tantric path, because it kept deflating my otherwise ballooning spiritual ego. This did not mean that Osho was devaluing the sincerity with which I was plunging into meditation. On the contrary, he was encouraging it. But at the same time he was making sure that no serious spiritual attitudes developed that would keep me ‘stiff and unnatural.’

In 1968, Osho was invited to give a lecture to a big, open-air, public gathering of several thousand people in Mumbai. The theme he was asked to speak on was love. Instead he talked about sex. He told the audience that the condemnation of sex by religion has created a loveless world – full of phony and fake expressions of love – because it is only out of transformed sexual energy that a loving heart is created. He said that the repression of sex, rather than destroying it, has made everyone sexually obsessed, so that instead of being a natural phenomenon, sex fills our minds with pornography and perversion – and religion is to blame.
By the end of the lecture those who had arranged the talk, sitting behind Osho with their white Gandhi caps, had fled from the platform and the gathering. To give some idea of the shock this created in Indian society, one woman present at the lecture said afterwards, “I knew that the word‘sambhog’ meant sex, but until that moment I had never heard it uttered in public” Osho gave four more discourses on the subject, ignoring public objections and threats to his life. In one of them, he asserted that meditation must have been discovered during sexual intercourse; because at the moment of orgasm the mind stops – time and space disappear – giving a glimpse of expanded consciousness. This glimpse provided the clue for seekers to explore ways of having the same experience without dependence on sex, hence the birth of meditation. The five discourses were published as a book titled, ’From Sex to Superconsciousness, which made Osho famous throughout the country.

Tantra is a dangerous way to live your life. This is especially true about your love life, because Tantra knows nothing about relationships. It knows everything about love, but has never heard the word ‘marriage’. It respects the individual but does not recognize couples. And if this does not make you shiver down to your very bones then perhaps you have not understood what I am saying, because to be honest it even scares me sometimes, when I see the truth of how life really is, rather than how I want it to be.
The basic choice for all of us, at any time, at any moment, is the choice between life and death. If we choose life, we are on the path of Tantra, because Tantra is nothing but awakening, celebrating and transforming life energy. If we choose death, we have abandoned Tantra.
Of course, nobody really thinks they are choosing death. What intelligent human being would do such a thing? But the truth is that every time we suppress an impulse of life and instead choose security, safety, comfort, or compromise then we are choosing death. We are announcing that we don’t want to live.
Excerpts from the book Tantralife by Radha C. Luglio

e-mail – radha@tantralife.com

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The Art of Listening – Veet Sandeh

August 3, 2006 at 7:20 am (Veet Sandeh)

A very talented musician, flamenco guitarist, composer, artist and a very sensitive soul. He has an impressive body of work with CDs published like Travels in Sound and Silence, and Global Gypsies. He was trained in western classical music and specifically guitar since he was twelve and gave his first performance at sixteen. As a child he was always thrilled by the orchestra with its ocean of sounds, and its capacity to completely engulf the listener. Music was always the big love of his life though it still is a mystery to him. For him music is meditation, his inner work, a profession as well as a way of communicating with the world. He feels there is an art in listening to music which can also be a way to get enlightened as you need to be receptive, attentive and have an empty mind without a constant flow of thoughts. He says that it is a rare quality now.
He has a beautiful story from Osho about Hariprasad Chaurasia, the maestro bamboo flute player. It seems that Hariji, even though he was a world famous musician, liked to come and play for Osho, as he really listened, and this was such a great difference from playing for the general public. People just don’t know how to listen, instead they do everything else – eating, talking, sleeping… As a listener you really have to learn how to listen. And in these times, he feels there is no respect or interest for live music.
As a teenager, he felt playing music would make him into a better person, until this was shattered by meeting some excellent musicians who turned out to be not such nice people. Realizing that there has to be a more holistic approach to his life with music, he began to look in all directions – philosophy, India, teachings… Finally he came across an Osho Meditation Center in his town of Frieberg, Germany and started doing meditations and groups. And then coming to Poona for the first time, he remembers sitting in the gardens of the Osho Meditation Resort playing his guitar for hours. He enjoyed this very much as he could play with no pressure which was a contrast to performing in concerts. He soon started to play in a band situation where he had to then start improvising. The turning point came when he did a group with Anuprada called ‘Gibberish to Music”. The group opened the floodgates for him and a lot of ideas and music started pouring out of him to the point where he could not sleep. It became an internal process and he learned a lot from this.
After spending half of his life playing guitar, he started learning the computer with all its intricacies for producing and mixing music. He describes it as going from one colour to playing with a kaleidoscope of many colours. Working in this medium has opened up a whole world for him musically. His hearing changed completely, his experience has taught him to sense quickly what element is working or disturbing in a mix. It’s like being in the place of a conductor with an overview of the whole process. Although it’s very demanding, it’s also an enriching experience at the same time. In electronic music as well he always uses some live element, whether it is flute or even just a voice because it then makes it sound natural. When you combine it with live acoustic music, it gives it soul. For him purely electronic music has no depth.

Veet Sandeh-Ma Faiza-Lightmotiv – Desert Angel

He has been working with DJ Ma Faiza the last couple of years producing music together. They met after she had heard the Global Gypsies CD which gave her the idea to organize what became a very successful tour of the band in Goa, India, in a combination of live music and DJ sets. Her dedication to music impresses him, and although they come from such different backgrounds and are very different personalities, he feels they complement each other beautifully. She comes from the viewpoint of a DJ knowing exactly what it is that literally moves people and what they respond to. He says he could have composed his whole life without anyone ever noticing, but she immediately plays what they create together in clubs in London and Ibiza. Working in this situation he feels he has done in one year what may have taken him ten. He now has a new album with Ma Faiza, also recently they did a remix for Omar Farouk … He presently lives in Jatzberg in Germany which friends playfully call Jazzberg.
He feels there are karmic problems with Germany and life is harder than it used to be, especially maintaining the standard of living. There seems to be a role-swap happening between East and West. The West was materialistic and the East was meditative, but it seems to be the opposite now. You can’t be
in Poona these days without having a business meeting on the first day you arrive.

www.myspace.com/mafaiza

Email: veetguitar@web.de

1Giant Leap-The Interview with Jamie Catto

August 2, 2006 at 9:02 am (1Giant Leap -Jamie Catto)

1Giant Leap is a title, a philosophy, a leap of faith that sprung from the minds of creative visionaries Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman, and was supported by music industry legend Chris Blackwell. It is a melding of 21st Century technology and age-old beliefs; of careful planning and spontaneity; of East and West; rich and poor; the embodiment of the unity in human diversity.
1Giant Leap features contributions from some of the most creative minds of our generation: Dennis Hopper, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Stipe, Robbie Williams, Tom Robbins, Speech (from Arrested Development), Brian Eno, Baaba Maal, Anita Roddick, Ram Dass, Michael Franti, Gabrielle Roth, Asha Bhosle, and many others

The primary theme of the project is “unity in diversity” – the assertion that regardless of one’s circumstance and experience, our similarities vastly outweigh our differences. 1 Giant Leap explores simple but universal concepts that touch all of us, no matter where we come from or where we are going. Chapters of the DVD correlate to tracks on the CD, each examining a fundamental concept like sex, death, God, time or unity with a powerful message of hope.

Adding to both the difficulty and joy of 1 Giant Leap were the logistics of amassing music, words and images from over 20 countries; from towns and villages with no running water to the most modern and technologically-forward cities. Catto and Bridgeman journeyed around the world for over six months, with mobile studio and crew in tow, compiling unique digital music and footage from evocative locales like Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Bombay, Bangalore, New Delhi, Varanasi, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bangkok, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The result is a new collaborative genre of music and image, a visual time capsule of the planet Earth at the turn of the 21st Century.

1Giant Leap – Death

1Giant Leap-The Interview with Jamie Catto

1) What inspired you to make the film, according to you what did you wish to express, what was the message?

Jamie – The original idea sprang from getting heads of religions to all say basically the same things and unwittingly express unity – Suddenly we opened up the discussion to ‘everyone we found inspiring’ and the parallel metaphor of the unity and diversity in the music spoke for itself.

2) ‘1 Giant Leap’ is the door in the future or does it start in the ‘here now’?

Jamie - As Osho says, the only choice you have is the part where you start’The Process’, after that there’s no control, but the river will surely reach the ocean.

3) One Giant Leap to where, and for whom? Do you feel it would be a collective leap or is it individual? Can the transition be peaceful or will there be chaos?

Jamie – Transitions mean death – so it’s a question of how you leap, but really it’s just the way Duncan and I satisfy ourselves artistically much more than a contrived ‘message’, we want more conversations, not answers.

4) Jesus comes up a lot in the film; also you spoke of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ as a film that had inspired you, along with “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” the album by Brian Eno and David Byrne. What does Jesus mean to you, do you see him as a mystic with contemporary solutions?

Jamie – Films like Jesus Christ Superstar and Jesus of Nazareth had a profound effect on me as a kid – I was particularly fascinated by Judas who, at a very young age, I felt sorry for. I don’t know too much about the specifics of Christs plan, but just for placing ‘Compassion’high up on the agenda he gets my vote.

5) ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts?’ was such an avant garde album. I still remember hearing ‘Regiment’ for the 1st time in 1978-9, and it blew my mind, the whole album still does. Can you talk about Brian Eno influences?

Jamie – There’s something about the chaos and discord of that record which is perfect for me, Brian Eno has always been very generous to us with his time and spirit, unlike David Byrne.

6) What did you do before 1 Giant Leap? What are you doing now?

Jamie – I was in ‘Faithless’ for 4 years – now we’re in post production on the second leap ‘2sides2everything’ – The dance of opposites that drives the universe.

7) Have you ever been to Koregaon Park, Poona, India or encountered Osho in any way?

Jamie – Osho’s books are great – especially ‘The songs of Milarepa’.

Was the original plan to make a movie or did it start as an audio project?

Jamie – Started as an audio, it was only because Chris Blackwell, who paid for the first record and film, was obsessed with dvd that they asked us to make a film.

9) Did you already have a script or did the ideas come as the film developed?

Jamie – It was thought up over one meal.

10) How did you make a connection with all the contributors in the film like Dennis Hopper, Tom Robbins, Michael Franti, Anita Roddick, Kurt Vonnegut, Asha Bhosale, Baaba Maal?

Jamie – Cold calling with intent.

11) How is the movie being seen across the world, is it spreading by word of mouth, in what way are you promoting it?

Jamie – It was years ago we promoted it but it’s growing even more now – we sell thousands on our website.

12) How did you and Duncan meet? Is there an interesting story?

Jamie – Not really, he was using a room in my house when a mutual friend was away.

13) I hear you are working on the second movie? What is it about?

Jamie – Duality.

Thank you Jamie

www.1giantleap.tv

It Simply Is! Interview with Dr Shyam S. Singha

August 1, 2006 at 8:17 am (Dr Shyam S. Singha)

Shyam Singha, D.O., D.Ac., a doctor of both osteopathy and acupuncture, with a practice that also includes naturopathy, homeopathy and meditation. His students have included Dr. J.R. Worsley, the renowned English acupuncturist and educator, and Dr. James Gordon, the holistic physician and author from Washington, D.C. who serves on the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He also was a close friend and later a disciple of Osho. In this interview with Dr. Daniel Redwood, Dr. Singha’s unique and uncompromising perspectives on health, diet, meditation, and personal power come through in a lively interchange marked repeatedly by unexpected turns in the road. Singha has a great aversion to becoming stuck in ruts of any sort, and he is dedicated, as a teacher and a medical practitioner, to using all the tools at his disposal to enable others to escape the cages of their own making

REDWOOD: I want to ask you some questions I have heard you answer before, to bring the answers to people who will be reading this.

SHYAM SINGHA: No, hold on. First of all, the answer will not be the same. Second thing, this may sound very funny to you, but I am not talking to you . . .
I have nobody to influence, I have no one to convert, I have nobody to follow me. I have not written a book for 35 years. [If I had] they would tie me to the book, saying “Bloody fool, you said that ten years ago, why today are you saying this ?

REDWOOD: Emerson said consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s why I speak of “bibliographical mind.” That means we give a list at the back of the book, the bibliography. “This has been said before, therefore what I am saying …. is actually accurate.” I’m not interested in accuracy. I’m interested in touching the heart. I may tell fibs to touch the heart, so they may call me a liar. Do you think people who think that lies are the opposite of truth, know the difference between them? Have they ever felt the difference? What is it like? What is truth? The truth of today is the lie of tomorrow.

REDWOOD: Does whether it is truth or a lie come from the intent?

SHYAM SINGHA: Everybody is doing it every day, every moment. Mother is doing it to the children, the husband is doing it to the wife, the boss is doing it to the employees, you are doing it to your son. The moment there is some gain to be had, in that game you are going to tell lies, because you want to get something.

REDWOOD: When you tell your stories, are they sometimes a lie on the outside, but true on the inside?

SHYAM SINGHA: For that moment, yes. At that moment the heart wants to touch another heart.

REDWOOD: Does meditation open the heart?

SHYAM SINGHA: The word “meditation” itself has to be understood. Meditation is your birthright, like sleep. Sleep is a birthright. If you can go out of, or be lost in the mind, you can also come in to the mind. It’s your birthright. The question is, we can discuss how not to meditate. To meditate is your birthright, and you have to find your own way.

REDWOOD: How should I not meditate?

SHYAM SINGHA: By dissipating your energy in a hundred million different spaces. There’s a very beautiful story about that. The disciple is leaving the master [after a visit] . . . he is walking very happily outside the door, and the master says to him, “Only one thing. You can think of anything else, but don’t think about pink elephants.” Now of course the poor devil can’t think about anything else except pink elephants, and the story is, he gets enlightened because there’s only one thought left.
So, that which helps also hinders. One moment it will help, and if you want to repeat it again, it will hinder. Now you’re frustrated. You thought you found the answer. And therefore your answer is wrong.

REDWOOD: What kind of healing qualities come to people from meditation?

SHYAM SINGHA: If you’re seeking healing qualities, you won’t get it. It comes of its own. If you demand healing qualities from meditation, you are looking for a needle in a haystack.

REDWOOD: This is what I was telling a patient of mine last week who has leukemia. Regarding meditation, she was saying “what if it doesn’t help my leukemia? I said, “if you’re going into it just to help your leukemia, it may be better not to start.”

SHYAM SINGHA: Have you ever heard of “placebo?”

REDWOOD: Sure.

SHYAM SINGHA: But have you heard the word “nocebo?”

REDWOOD: Yes.

SHYAM SINGHA: We do nothing else but put nocebos in the human brain. Parents do it, physicians do it, politicians do it, priests do it; police sergeants do it. Everybody’s putting nocebos in.

REDWOOD: Wait, I was thinking of a nocebo indicating “pain,” like in “nociception.” What do you mean by it?

SHYAM SINGHA: Nocebo means “negative thought process.” “No!” You’re carrying more no’s than yes’s. Thou shalt not do this, thou shall not do that. Twelve Commandments…

REDWOOD: I’m familiar with ten. What are the other two?

SHYAM SINGHA: The eleventh is that there are no commandments. The twelfth is, “Thou shalt not be found out.” Nobody should be able to find out.

REDWOOD: I assume that people come to you for many reasons. Are there certain kinds of ailments, or certain kinds of people, that you feel you are most effective with?

SHYAM SINGHA: There is no fixed pattern. None…

REDWOOD: So you are always open to what presents itself?

SHYAM SINGHA: Whether it’s AIDS or cancer or depression, it doesn’t matter. That’s only the name. I’m not treating the name. I’m not putting a diagnosis on my cases. When they come, they already know that I am a “crackpot.” They already know they have to take their bloody clothes off. They already know they will have to do something drastic, like dancing naked in front of a mirror until they fall down. If they don’t want to follow it, they cancel the appointment. If I find out they haven’t done it, I don’t give them another appointment. I tell them “you’re wasting your money and my time.” So nobody does that.

REDWOOD: Was there a time when all doctors were like this?

SHYAM SINGHA: Why do you ask that question ?

REDWOOD: Well, it seems so rare now. Is there a tradition from which you come, in which you believe, in which this is the normal way of doing things? Because it’s not normal now. Not here.

SHYAM SINGHA: The dictionary meaning of “doctor” is “teacher.” Not [someone] that takes away the pain. So if you can’t teach, you are only celebrating somebody’s pain. Or suppressing somebody’s pain… Or replacing somebody’s pain… You haven’t enabled them to not create the pain.
. . . Once in a while a phenomenon happens, an Einstein phenomenon. And when he [Einstein] is dying, you know what he said? He said, “Oh God, if I am ever born again, make me a plumber, not a scientist,” Because he created so much misery, by giving knowledge into the hands of fools, who are more destructive than constructive.

REDWOOD: What is the moral of that story?

SHYAM SINGHA: The moral of that story is, “Thou shalt not throw pearls in front of swine.”

REDWOOD: What should we do with pearls?

SHYAM SINGHA: Make a necklace.

REDWOOD: Do you feel that the positive value, if there is any, in modern technological medicine, outweighs the harm that may come from it?

SHYAM SINGHA: Modern medicine in many ways is good. If you’re run over by a truck, no voodoo is going to save you. You’ll need the beautiful hand of a surgeon. I’m talking about unnecessary pill-pushers, unnecessary prescribing.

REDWOOD: How about the use of radiation, diagnostically or therapeutically? I sometimes feel that if x-rays had never been invented, overall it would have been better, although I use them sometimes.

SHYAM SINGHA: Do all chiropractors use x-rays?

REDWOOD: Nearly all.

SHYAM SINGHA: In 35 years, I have taken x-rays probably three times.

REDWOOD: Which times? Why?

SHYAM SINGHA: The brain was not giving an answer. And if the brain is not giving an answer, you should neither fool yourself nor the patient . . .
Tell me, if you went with a glass of water to the tenth floor of whatever the biggest petroleum company in this country is, and you said to them, “I can convert water into petrol, do you think you would come down the elevator again?

REDWOOD: No.

SHYAM SINGHA: Good. So most of civilization is run by four items; armamentaria, locomotion, pharmacopia and insurance.

REDWOOD: I understand armamentaria. What do you mean by locomotion?

SHYAM SINGHA: Trucks, cars, airplanes. Movement. Pharmacopia and insurance… You take those four out, and there are no roots. You can’t grow your principal food.

REDWOOD: Do you feel that all doctors make their living from people’s suffering?

SHYAM SINGHA: Most surgical interventions become obsolescent within 10 years, and obsolete within 15. Surgeons perform the unnecessary operations not because they are needed, but because the surgeon wants a swimming pool in his back yard. These are not my words. These are the words of the Surgeon General of America.
The hospital is run by 10 departments. So you send them unnecessarily to those 10 departments because you want to maintain those10 departments. Not because it is a necessity. 13.8 percent of diabetes happens because of the glucose tolerance test.

REDWOOD: Are you saying the test itself causes people to begin to be diabetic?

SHYAM SINGHA: When a person is diabetic, if you will give him no sugar, and put him on a diet, and not give him the bloody glucose tolerance test, he will not have a shock. You will avert 13 out of 100.

REDWOOD: Do you ever recommend that test?

SHYAM SINGHA: No. I will check the urine and pinprick and then put him on a diet

REDWOOD: What kind of diet?

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s the million dollar question.

REDWOOD: Depends on the individual?

SHYAM SINGHA: There is no panacea. There is no Elixir.

REDWOOD: What kinds of factors do you base it on? Do you base it on the Indian Ayurvedic system, or the Five Element Chinese system, or on a synthesis which is within you ?

SHYAM SINGHA: Synthesis. When you have an eye of depth, you will see that all systems somehow or other interconnect. Ayurvedic has five elements, Chinese has five elements. Chinese have heaven, earth and man. Ayurvedic has three gunas; air, water and fire.

REDWOOD: But the definitions don’t overlap exactly. Fire in one is not exactly fire in the other.

SHYAM SINGHA: True. But the concept, once you understand the body, and look deeper into it, it fits in. Then you are at a level where you can understand another physician from another group altogether. Like let’s say a surgeon goes from here to Indonesia, where another surgeon has done a similar procedure . . . they will understand each other.

Surgeons never want to call themselves doctors, you know that? They are called “Mister.”
In indian culture. When a physician reached a stage where he could see these things, he was not called a physician; he was called “Kabiraj,” “King of Poetry”

REDWOOD: Poetry?

SHYAM SINGHA: Because the body is poetry now. He is a physician, but he is looking at the rhythm of the chakras, so he is “Kabi.” Same thing happened with the Chinese. When he reached a stage of thankfulness, he was no longer an acupuncturist. He wouldn’t stick them with a needle. So you see it’s the same. I’ll give you an example.
You take homeopathy. One says, “No, no, no! You have to take a constitutional remedy.” The other says, “No, no, no! You’ve got to remove the miasma.” [Miasma refers to what homeopaths consider to be three general categories of illness/imbalance. Everyone falls into one of these categories]. The third one says, “No, no, no! First you’ve got to get rid of the symptoms.

REDWOOD: Is there no one answer?

SHYAM SINGHA: Can’t be!

REDWOOD: Can healing therefore come from any one of many approaches?

SHYAM SINGHA: In society (now please listen to this very carefully) it is not what you know, but who you know. In society, in healing, it is not what is given, it is who is giving.
The patient rings up, and says, “I’ve got this disease and this disease.” I say, “Okay, take this, this and this.” The patient says, “But I have already taken this, this and this that you are recommending.”
You know what my answer is? I tell them, “Do it now, and see what happens.” They might have done it before, but they were doing it with a doubt in their mind. Now Shyam has said it, and they are doing it without any doubt in mind.

REDWOOD: Would you say that standardization of care, which is such a highly valued quality in western medicine, is therefore a mistake?

SHYAM SINGHA: Totally.

REDWOOD: How then does a patient, or a licensing agency, determine which approach is dangerous, which is helpful, and which is neither?

SHYAM SINGHA: You have to teach the precepts first. Then create a situation where these precepts can be broken. A bandwagon quack, not trained properly, can be dangerous.

REDWOOD: By “bandwagon quack”, do you mean someone who follows the rules all the time?

SHYAM SINGHA: No. A bandwagon quack is someone who thinks that modern medicine is bull@!$%#. Who thinks he has found “the way,” and he calls modern medicine all…. [knocks on table twice…]. Nothing on this earth is not useful, but we fall into a trap.
Doctors practice fueled by fear… You want to practice; first you have to have malpractice insurance. So you are afraid before you started.
[Notices other people around him have finished eating]. I have become a slow eater, or what?

REDWOOD: You’ve been talking. Maybe it’s that you chew well also.

SHYAM SINGHA: Chew well! What was the name of that Canadian, who said chew the food 40 times? By the time he was 40, he ground down all his teeth. Gurdjieff was ticked off by a Sufi master, who was giving a discourse while they were having the meal. Gurdjieff was sitting right in one corner. He heard somewhere that you had to chew the food 40 times. The Sufi master gets annoyed, and he says, “You are taking away the bloody work of the stomach!!” It will shrivel. You’ll get dyspepsia. So, that which helps also hinders. You can do things beyond.

REDWOOD: Would it be reasonable then to say that moderation is a virtue?

SHYAM SINGHA: Nothing is a virtue. Sometimes moderation is needed, sometimes total license. So don’t feel if you’re moderate, “I am pious, I am good, I have no faults.” How would you know what good and bad is, if you don’t know anything about faults? Do-gooders are a pain in the neck. They bring more harm than good.

REDWOOD: If we shouldn’t “do good,” what should we do?

SHYAM SINGHA: Movement… Response… Spontaneity… What the Chinese masters say: “Find…fix…forget” If something does not work, do not feel deflated. If something does work, do not feel elated. Look, the beauty of that is if something works, you will remember it. If you use it next time, how do you know it is going to work again? You are not finding and fixing and forgetting. You are remembering the formula.

REDWOOD: And then applying it inappropriately.

SHYAM SINGHA: To someone else who doesn’t need it. And if something doesn’t work, how do you know that that very same thing is not going to work better next time.

REDWOOD: Is all healing intuitive?

SHYAM SINGHA: What is the meaning of intuitive?

REDWOOD: Comes from within you, not based on deductive thought processes or something you were taught in school.

SHYAM SINGHA: When you play the piano, you have to learn, “do, re, mi, fa” and all the bloody things, all the scales and everything. Then one day something happens, and now you can create your own music. You must learn your precepts, and then make music.

REDWOOD: If someone comes to you, and says they want to become a healer, what might you say to them?

SHYAM SINGHA: I tell them to go learn a discipline first. No matter what discipline it is, go and learn a discipline.

REDWOOD: Is it important to always be thankful?

SHYAM SINGHA: Yes. This has to come not from word of mouth. It has to come from somewhere very deep down, where you say “Listen, I don’t deserve it, but you’re so kind to me.”

REDWOOD: Do you think the food we eat should be reflective of the climate in which we live?

SHYAM SINGHA: That’s the idea of Michio Kushi and Oshawa [macrobiotics] because they wanted to flog Japanese rice.

REDWOOD: It was in Edgar Cayce too, and elsewhere.

SHYAM SINGHA: What I’m trying to say is that you have to make this temple [points to his body] right. If your eating is wrong, it doesn’t matter what food you eat. Ayurveda says that once you have sat down at a table, you give thanks and eat stones, and it will be digested. Every time you take a fork and say “My God!” [his facial expression indicates scowling rejection of the food], now you have made yourself ill.
The only time you have to think about food is when you are preparing or buying it, not while you are sitting and eating. Eating means “Eat!” If you start thinking about what to eat while you are at the table, you produce acid and you will destroy everything.
There were 20 people, and a woman walked in, and she was furious, because this Sufi had put her son [who was quite ill] on a vegetarian diet for one month. She walked in, and there was meat and chicken, and she was shouting [because the man himself was eating meat, while he had told her son not to.] So the Sufi lifts the lid off the dish, and a [live] chicken walks out. He said, “The day your son can do that, he can also have chicken.”
Now you have to listen to me with a pinch of salt. It has nothing to do with the food. What I am trying to say is that it is the one who is eating it. Once you are here, eat and thank: “Hello carrot, how are you?” [He eats a carrot].
Suppose you are a vegetarian and she is a non-vegetarian, and you are sitting at the table. Now you are a finicky vegetarian. You look at her eating, and you think, “That food, it is killing her.” You think you are doing yourself a favor? You are producing acid, and she is enjoying herself. She is celebrating.

REDWOOD: So if we are truly in tune with our own needs, maybe anything is good?

SHYAM SINGHA: You are getting there. It is not the food. It is who is eating it. That doesn’t mean epidemics won’t happen, food poisoning won’t happen… But that also means that you will eat [only] when you are hungry.

REDWOOD: We were planning to go out for dinner last night, but we weren’t very hungry, so we just had a banana, and that was fine.

SHYAM SINGHA: This is very good.

REDWOOD: Thank you very much.

Recognized as a leader in his field, Dr. Redwood is the author of three books, including the textbook, Fundamentals of Chiropractic (Mosby, 2003), which reviewers have called “the most important book on chiropractic in the last decade” and “simply the best text yet published.” He serves on the editorial board of Journal of the American Chiropractic Association and is Associate Editor of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the world’s leading research journal in the field.

www.drredwood.com

Sometimes a Feather – Purnananda

August 1, 2006 at 7:58 am (Sometimes a Feather)

On Primal Therapy , Purnananda says it’s an inner journey of self discovery, that allows you the freedom to be more responsive rather than reactionary, more loving than critical, more compassionate than judgmental. You begin to trust yourself. The answers are in you, to discover your own feelings, and to go with them. When you start stepping into the unknown, you realize it’s the only way to be alive. People live in fear, primal helps you face your fears, and take the risk to go through them. People ask me what will it cost me to do Primal, I say, ‘Your life, as you know It.’, the old has to die, in order for the new to be born.’ Primal is one half of a whole. The other is witnessing or meditation. You can’t have one without the other. Osho used to say Primal is either the first or the last therapy you do. The first if you are all in the head or the last if you’ve done many other therapies.. Arthur Janov, author of The Primal Scream, has a background in neuro-physical psychology and is a graduate of Claremont Graduate School and the University ofCalifornia. He was working with insight therapy before he discovered primal therapy. He realized that conflicts in peoples present situations have their origins in their past, in their childhood. And any traumas that we haven’t been able to fully experience can become encapsulated in the body in the form of chronic tension or as emotional baggage; behavior patterns that cause pain, misery and suffering. In Primal these repressed feelings are released in a neuro-physiological sequence. Feelings run like this – fear, anger, pain, feeling.., a lot of what people call anger is really fear. Death is the one thing people fear the most. The other is being alone, which is also a death.

John Lennon went through Primal in 1970. He felt it was a huge improvement on his time spent with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It seems that Janov had come up with a cure for the cure, screaming as a remedy for the Maharishi’s meditation technique. Afterwards he made the first primal album, which was considered the most important solo post-Beatles record – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in which on the track, ‘God’, he rejects all his past belief systems and declares, ‘The dream is over’.

Purnananda says, when I did therapy with Janov, it saved my life. It would be just another step on the way. The final step was Osho. I came to India biased against meditation as Janov was against meditation. He felt it was not existential. Of course, people do meditation techniques and think that that’s meditation. Meditation is a happening, it’s not a doing. An enlightened master can take you right through it. What are masters for? To wake you up!

Purnananda came to Osho in 1976. He remembers a darshan with him, when he had asked “Purnananda, something to say?” I said, “Everyday is different”. His reply was, “Yes it is. And if you think it isn’t, it’s only the mind”. I was like a kid. How to keep that space..? Primal has played a part in that. You can’t do Primal from the head. It’s not something you can figure out; it’s not some systemized thing that you can follow. That’s the beauty of it; you’re flying by the seat of your pants. If you’re a technician you’re going to fail because you have to have a presence. I am at ease with it now. It’s not a struggle, not a doing, not a performance. It’s being here, its meditation. Sometimes you have to be as gentle as a feather, and other times like a hammer. Sometimes the feather can be heavier than the hammer. The beauty with Primal is watching people come alive.
Purnananda says, go with what you feel, you will benefit from it. If you keep doing it long enough you will get to where you trust you, and then you are open to existence. Love is the key, to live totally and enjoy. Everything is an opportunity, if you look at it correctly.

Purnananda is a Primal therapist and has trained with Arthur Janov who discovered Primal therapy. He is based in Pune, India where he conducts groups and trainings, as well as travels the world where his work takes him.

Primal therapy is also available at the Osho Meditation Resort, Pune.

Email: purnananda@hotmail.com

My War With Me – Krishna Prem

August 1, 2006 at 7:41 am (My War With Me)

I first met Osho on Valentine’s Day in 1973 at a meditation camp in the Indian desert. At night, I slept on the ground just outside the room where he was staying and, as I recall, the mosquitoes that kept me company were bigger than my consciousness. How I got there is a strange story. In fact, you could say I got there courtesy of the U.S. Army. I’d just arrived in India after a five-year fight with the army about Vietnam. I did not want to fight the Vietnamese, the army wanted me to fight, and the only fight I was willing to fight was against my own army. So we went through the whole process we call Court Marshal and it was very difficult. It took five years for the army to give me an honorable discharge and to this day I am proud my walking papers read: Michael Mogul is unable to adjust to the military lifestyle. You got that right, guys. I took my discharge and I went to London, England, where the only job I could get was as a bartender. Many of my customers were beautiful people – guys I had a lot of respect for, guys that fought in World War II and had half their face blown off. You could still see the burn marks all over their bodies. I was jealous that they were willing to fight for their country, and the secret of my own discharge went deeper and deeper, the misery went deeper and deeper, and one day I couldn’t handle it anymore. I got really drunk and got on the
first plane that was available. That plane took me on a one way ticket to Mumbai, India.
It wasn’t quite as accidental as that, because when you work in England until two o’clock in the morning and you still want a bite to eat; the only restaurants that are open are Indian restaurants. So I ended up making Indian friends and loving the food. That’s how I chose Mumbai. That’s how I got to be sleeping outside Osho’s door. In the morning, Osho sat in a chair just in front of me, dressed in a simple white robe. My first thought was – How can a man have so much strength and lightness at the same time?
I remember instantly falling in love with him while not exactly feeling great about myself. My dark side, my inner secret, was killing me.
Out of the blue, Osho looked at me and said, “The revolution is inside you.” Up until that moment the revolution had been outside. The enemy was outside, the army was outside, my girlfriends were outside… life was outside and I hated it all. When I heard Osho say that it was like something went off in my head. I knew that I could work on myself, that I could drop the hate I had toward life. I could drop the hate I had for myself.

‘A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way. His very way of life is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply
understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear.’

OSHO, from: ‘Zen: The Path of Paradox, vol. II’

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Morphic Resonance – Rupert Sheldrake

August 1, 2006 at 7:34 am (Morphic Resonance)

In England at the beginning of the last century a system of milk delivery began where people had bottles of milk delivered to their doorsteps. After about twenty years in one city, Southampton, blue tits started tearing off the tops of the milk bottles and drinking the cream from the bottle. This was a very successful habit. It spread by imitation throughout the whole city, and usually it worked very well. There were a few tragic cases where blue tits were found drowned, headfirst, in people’s milk bottles, but most of these birds got a free breakfast. After a while this turned up in another city far away. The rate at which the habit spread throughout Britain was carefully monitored by observers all over the country.
Now, blue tits are home-loving birds. They move very short distances from their homes, so at the time, it was concluded that the habit was being independently discovered again and again in different parts of the country.Yet the rate of discovery was accelerating.The most interesting developments actually came from Holland. After British blue tits had started stealing milk, Continental ones began doing it, too. And in Holland the habit spread as it had in England, until by the time of the Second World War, all over Holland blue tits were stealing milk. Then unfortunately for the Dutch blue tits, the Germans invaded and milk delivery stopped. It was not until 1948 that deliveries began again. But blue tits do not live more than three or four years, so there could have been no blue tits around in 1948 that remembered the golden age of free cream before the war. Nevertheless the habit re-established itself all over Holland within two or three years.

el geko - TARSIS

This is one of the few well documented cases that have many interesting implications for change in the human realm. It suggests a new view of evolution, because it allows new patterns of form and behavior to spread much more quickly and effectively than they could on the basis of conventional Darwinian evolutionary theory based on random genetic mutation followed by generations of natural selection.
- Rupert Sheldrake

RUPERT SHELDRAKE received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge and was a research fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and director of studies in cell biology and biochemistry. He studied philosophy at Harvard, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow, and has done research on tropical plants in Malaysia and India. He is the author of the books, A New Science of Life, The Presence of the Past, and The Rebirth of Nature

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