From The EYES of A Townie

In the local language of Assam the word "MAJULI" itself means an island.It's created by the mighty Brahmaputra and the Kherkotia Xuti, an anabranch of the Brahmaputra, joined by the Subansiri River on north. Originally, the island was a long, narrow piece of land called Majoli (land in the middle of two parallel rivers) that had the Brahmaputra flowing in the north and the Burhidihing flowing in the south, till they met at Lakhu. Frequent earthquakes in the period 1661–1696 set the stage for a catastrophic flood in 1750 that continued for 15 days, which is mentioned in historical texts and reflected in folklore. As a result of this flood, the Brahmaputra split into two branches — one flowing along the original channel and the other flowing along the Burhidihing channel and the Mājuli island was formed. The Burhidihing's point of confluence moved 190 km east and the southern channel which was the Burhidihing became the Burhi Xuti. The northern chann...

The easiest way to get hold of the mind is to sit quiet and let it drift where it will for a while. Hold fast to the idea, " I am the witness watching my mind drifting. The mind is not I ." Then see it think as if it were a thing entirely apart from yourself. Identify yourself with God, never with matter or with the mind. Picture the mind as a calm lake stretched before you and the thoughts that come and go as bubbles rising and breaking on its surface. Make no effort to control the thoughts, but watch them and follow them in imagination as they float away. This will gradually lessen the circles.  For the mind ranges over wide circles of thought and those circles widen out into ever increasing circles, as in a pond when we throw a stone into it. We want to reverse the process and starting with a huge circle make it narrower until at last we can fix the mind on one point and make it stay there.  Hold to the idea, " I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I a...

“India is the only country in the world where history text books teaches a history which dilutes the nationalist elements rather than strengthening it. In India, we consider the Indian history   written by foreign authors more authentic than the books penned by Indian historians.  ”                                                                                                                        - V.S Naipul  It is one of the biggest myths that India got its Independence out of total nonviolence. In times, when it’s almost impossible to drive your tenant out of your house without force, how can we even think that that mighty British left us because of this so call...

We often see it happen again and again. This is something many of us don’t know enough about and therefore even though we don’t feel it is the right thing to be done,we still just let it slip by. I too had many doubts regarding what is Manu-Smriti and why is it so hated by a particular group of people and that too so much so that they can’t get the satisfaction by burning it once and they have to keep doing it every year. Now, I am from a family where we don’t shy away from our culture and heritage and therefore I think I had heard about pretty much all the main important scriptures which were useful and were important guide in leading our life. I had heard about the Ramayana, Bhagavad-Gita (and Mahabharata, obviously!), the Vedas, the Upanishadas and even some of the Puranas like Vishnu Purana etc. and I promise I had never even heard about Manu-Smriti.  I was curious. I wanted to know more about Manu-Smriti. I searched about it. I found out that it was a book on sugge...

Swami  Vivekananda  did not  live long and left his physical body at the age of 39. Even though Swamiji suffered from many ailments such as diabetes and asthma. But on the day of passing he was actually in good health and in jovial mood during breakfast. So What caused him to die so young? So behind the every transformation of soul, there is a greater spirituality hidden that we never notice. However luckily Swami revealed the truth  himself. Nearly 6 years before his demise ,swami ji confined to his disciple swami Abhedanaanda that he wont live more than 5-6 years. WOW! how so accurate was he?   When questioned , he said  that his soul is getting bigger and bigger every day. His soul can hardly be contained in it and any day it can burst the cage of flesh and bone. soul = pure consciousness. So what swamiji meant is that his consciousness was expanding beyond the realms of ordinary consciousness to the domain of super consciousness that body was...