Spiritual Ambulance

Flashback to the 3rd day of YES!+ in Mysore. It was friday. The fridays are for the Devi Puja. In Ashram every friday morning there will be an elaborate Devi Puja.

To my surprise and pleasure Guruji visited Mysore on that day !!

He was supposed to arrive at around 10:30.

All hustle and rush, we got ready and reached the Mysore Ashram,a scenic place at the foothills of Chamundeshwari Devi Temple. We cleaned up, decorated the hall, the pathway was put with a red carpet, rangoli got put up and Lalita Sahasranam chanting started.We had got the news that He is visiting the temple first and then coming to the Ashram. We got on our three bikes and started our climb uphill !

on the way up, we were crossed by Police jeep, a series of cars and … Guruji’s car with a blue siren lamp on it!! I was thrilled to follow the entourage! Of course, on the uphill, the cars went zooommmm! Soon we reached the temple to see them parked and the Master had entered temple. the Q was huge, so we bought special entrance tickets and went in. It was so wonderful to see the deity and then Guruji doing offerings in a Yagnya being performed. Swami ji also accompanied him. there was a group of devotees too following him. He took good amount of time and then moved ahead. The crowd was amused, charmed and blessed with his presence! Those who came to see the divine that day had the divine visiting them!

I went ahead downhill, thinking I may have missed Guruji’s superfast train of cars to the Ashram at the foot hill. I had some difficulty on the roads, so I asked for directions and continued downhill. And there it is! The siren and series of Cars! they crossed me and this time since it was downhill, I could keep track. I saw the cars taking a slight de-tour and it seemed as if Guruji’s cars were avoiding some one-way down the hill. Soon on the platau and it was easier to follow the cars because of some traffic they faced. Soon we reached another temple! to my surprise! The temple got filled with Guruji and his devotees. we went to other side branch of the temple where the Shiva linga is honored. Took teertham and left after Guruji.

The next part of the travel following His cars was through city! at times they went so much ahead that I almost lost track! but soon I caught up. it turned out that we had visited a temple on the other side of the foothill of Chamundeshwari. Soon we reached Ashram. Guruji said,” Till 2011 its like an examination time for all the Sadhak s. keep doing your sadhana, seva, satsang. in 2012 there will be change! “

After another close darshan with the Guru, we left for the city, where He visited few devotees’ houses. it was so wonderful to see Him so closely and visiting even not-so-big houses.

When we departed, there was contentment more than what I could hold on to. The Spiritual Ambulance had moved on to Mandya and Bangalore … Many more hungry for the solace to the hearts, a glimpse of their dear one waiting there!

 

 

 

Hubli YES!+

The happy happening Hubli team of YES!+ graduates had organized a YES!+ course. It was my pleasure to teach that one! What gems and pearls they are! 

I was so well taken care of during the stay and travel.

Each time I teach a course, something opens up inside me! A certain load is lifted up. However now I don’t have that heavy and slightly sorrowish feeling at the end of the course which I used to have when I did seva as a volunteer – now I know its not an end of a great thing, its just a beginning!

 

Mysore YES!+

The Mast Mast Mysore team of YES!+ graduates organized two YES!+ courses recently… Was my pleasure to teach! And take one upgrade there too… !! Went to zoo, ate out, watched movie too… all in all a great time. What’s more, there was Guruji’s visit to Mysore!

Shivamogga Trip – 2

Next day we woke up early for the Bhadra river dam, place where Guruji Meditated. The climb was bit unexpected but became pleasant when I saw Guruji walking around with a hundred plus crowd! I joined them too and we had a great stroll around the place. the Dam has some wonderfully lush green islands with resorts on them. the breeze flew so well, and masters gestures and smiles were all too good!

After a truly close meet with him, we did the long sudarshan kriya, and took a bath in the river. the water was so inviting, first I thought I wont take the whole bath, but after wetting feet, I just got into it fully and enjoyed the cold water thoroughly, splashing water on those next to me! we also took a darshan of the temple there.

Whole trip I had the stomach upset, emphasizing to me how much more sadhana I need to do for fitness! Especially the stomach related exercises are getting missed out, so will add them.

The bus returned to Shivamogga town, where we rested and had meals.  Evening we went to another town Sirsi, this time the bus had an added flavour of Truth and Dare game challenging the people beyond their comfort zones! We reached the place just when Satsang got over. The view of Jog falls on the way was awesome. In Sirsi, we visited Marikamba Temple, where it was so wonderful to sing the Devi songs we sing in Satsang. The temple has such serene blissful energy, and the deity has such innocence and beauty!After meals we returned to Bangalore with a fully filled trip and a truckload of Sattva !

Shivamogga trip – 1

The Art of Living foundation is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. We visited Guruji’s mahasatsangs in Karnataka last two days. The journey began from an early morning bus in Bangalore, packed with some 50 YES!+ graduates, volunteers and teachers. The bus carried with it laughters, singing, puzzles and stories ranging from ghost stories to Guru stories! The first stop was at Arasikere, a town north to bangalore. The school grounds was packed with seats under a shamiana, and we had lovely music by Chayanna – Swami Suryapada going on. His singing is like fresh water in the fast flowing river! The songs, samskrit shlokas, just flow through him.

Guruji soon arrived and after a couple of formalities, and songs, spoke about keeping cleanliness, removing ignorance, fighting against corruption and such important things. He said by practicing pranayama, meditation, one automatically gets into doing good work effortlessly.

After Satsang we had delicious curd rice made with hot boiled rice and some other dish, served with love by the volunteers for all the satsangees. They must have served thousands of people that day!

Then we moved on to Shivamogga, often called as Shimoga for short, and got into our lodges which were booked by our local organizing team there. It was all made so much comfortable!

Shivamogga satsang started at 6 pm in a huge ground again filled with chairs. Guruji made it a point to invite and give seats to all the Math incharge swamis, who had came to grace the occasion.

A clean Room

Recently Varun Bhalerao from Caltech University visited IIA and it was super pleasure to be with him and attend his talks. You combine a four years of IITB engineering training and on top of that the practical hands on work in a Space Technology lab at Caltech, you get Varun. An absolute genius when I met him years ago, in Fergusson college, he bagged gold medals in Astronomy olympiads in his junior college days. He made a rare switch from an EE Btech in IITB to Astro in Caltech!

He spoke about the new X ray space telescope they are building at Caltech, its requirements, capabilities, deployment schedules and many interesting things. The best part was Varun explained things very clearly, making it understood to the audience. The next day he spoke about other compact star objects and their studies.

The third day we visited some of our labs at CREST – IIA’s center at Hosakote. Apart from remote monitoring of Hanle’s observatory, this center has some ingenious labs for space technology testing and fabrication. The room is called Clean Room, because its dust particle density is ensured to be much smaller through filtered air supplied in the room. The room can be visited in special suits covering your whole body, and the transition to the rooms chambers is through an Air Shower. The chambers have successive cleanliness, in the sense that one has 3lac, 1lac, 10k and then even lesser number of particles larger than .5 microns per meter cube. the cleanliness is maintained to avoid any contamination of the space grade instruments. in Space telescopes, if you have even a small contaminant, then it will evaporate on exposure to the radiations, and spoil the entire set of observations.

The room had many ovens so to speak, containers where you can bake the material to specific temperature for evaporating its surface contaminants and then outgassing the vapors. if the vapors are more than allowed limit, the sample is sent back to the fabrication unit!

I learnt many new things, things not written in your textbook diagrams. for example, there is a pipe near primary in a reflecting telescope, which allows only the light reflected from secondary to go into it, thus avoiding any stray light directly entering in. Then there are axial and other safety precautions in the mounting of the telescope in the satellite. There are precautions on what materials you use to make all those small parts.

We also visited the optics lab where the research focus is on adaptive optics, a method of correction for atmospheric disturbance in the propagation of light from stars to the earth based telescopes. The lab had state of art facilities and equipments.

The Washing Machine

 

 

 

 

Eggless cooker cake!

 

 Enjoy!    

Ingredients

Eggless cooker Cake Mix (Vanilla or chocolate)   {I have used pilsbury brand from some supermarkets.Even other cake mix you can use with same procedure. instead of eggs use one spoon oil or 100 gm butter.}

Chocolate sauce

Gems

Wheat Flour

Butter

Oil

Procedure

Make Cake batter using cake mix, molten butter 50 gm, two spoon oil. Grease the pan with butter and wheat floor. Pour the Cake batter. Heat in oven or pressure cooker without whistle for 25 min. Remove cover and heat for 5 more minutes to dry the cake.The cake is done when a knife inserted comes out clean. Let the cake cool down for one hour in a dry container.  Decorate with chocolate sauce and Gems.

The procedure to place the baking vessel inside the cooker is as follows:-

Put a stand for the vessel in the cooker, of about 1 inch height. it should allow flow of steam if generated. e.g. inverted katori won’t allow. fill water till the height of that stand or little more. and on top of the stand the baking container.

Greasing the pan is important to make it easy for removing the cake. Any unevenness on the cake surface can be hidden behind the chocolate sauce!

Variants

Cashews, dryfruits can also be added in the batter. Chocolate chips put inside the batter can melt within and give the effect of Choco Lava as they serve in some pizza outlets.

Courses

Art of Living Part one Course with Hari and me

 

 

YES!+ with Priyanka and me

The Twenty Second Januaries

Here I came

in the 1980s

on a 22nd January

And it becomes

such a special day

every year

and again.

They say its a day

When the universe showers

A thousand blessings

And a gift to cherish

The fact that you were born

is recalled and rejoiced

For the presence got a form

and is seen so bright!

Especially with art of living family around, the birthdays are a boon!

Expected as well as un-expected calls came! Some were so much amazing. Then it was like I was full of wishes and happiness, and couldn’t take anymore! Then on I just left it on others to keep wishing for their own happiness!

Many cakes got cut! Starting with one in Elita followup! Then one at BTM Center. Then Third at home when our YES!+ Gang had dropped home. then evening Satsang I got nice mala in Bal Mandir Satsang and came back home to get a surprise party! The preparations were ON, and to my surprise they were even decorating the hall! They were writing HAPPY BIRTHDAY with those paper designs. Since time was less, I said leave it at Happy itself. The design still clings on our walls!

Then we danced and danced till we got tired, Aditi sang Gurupuja, we ate and ate the tasty dinner made by Jai and Divakar, Rohit. Aditi – Shailendra gifted one nice T Shirt. All in all a great day of birthday celebrations.