Practical Thoughts

Dear Reader, Who remembers Mantovani, Frank Sinatra, Matt Munro, Doris Day, Kenny Ball, Cat Stevens or even Sounds Orchestral or Dana? And who remembers " What A Wonderful World" as sung by the throaty Louis Armstrong ? More particularly, firstly listen to his intro. Once upon a time, popular music contained a great variety of different forms (genres) of music, including many ballads, folk music and light jazz, as well as beat music in general. I can remember the occasional piano  recital  or even an orchestral 'hit' in the 'charts', but that occurs no more. Once upon a time, you could usually understand what a singer was singing about! And the change has all happened in the last 30 years. Increasingly over that time, noise and gadgets and the drive towards an improved national economy, 'getting on in life' and ownership of 'things' have taken over the lives of many people. And to the extent that the need for the ability to sit quietly and cont...

 Dear Reader, The world is floundering. Surely everyone can see it? However, it could be said that most ordinary people are now more glued to the cost of living situation that has emerged this last few months, while those who are more well-heeled have more time to take in the terrible situation in Ukraine and quickly come forward to help out the many refugees.  All this while people are encouraged to think that what was normal a few years ago can continue. While government leaders all prepare in some way for the Climate Change challenge, they are taking every care not to hurt the interests of big business too much for they fear that by doing so they will harm the economy of their countries. They do all this while frequently ignoring some of the basic issues that are already hurting our planet in a very fundamental way - such as the need for healthy soil to grow healthy food. Anyone who saw the Save Soil project launch in London on the 20th will have been impressed by the leade...

Dear Reader, As we can all see, Ukraine and its people are already so badly damaged to the extent that it is hard to believe what Russia will gain out of it apart from a bloated ego. At the same time, surely it is wrong to blacken the name of all Russian people, a country that has produced the likes of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Solzhenitsyn. The ordinary people have suffered hard and long and it is their great misfortune that the leadership of their country has usually been found wanting.  Yet it would seem that serious attempts are being made in some quarters to tarnish all Russians because of their ego-centred leader. Is the West so good? When we think back to what has been perpetrated by the West in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya (all under 'false flags'), apart from the Syria situation, I can only think that Putin has been looking at what has been done by the 'good' West over the whole of his reign as Russia's president and has decided, "Well, if th...

Dear Reader, The world of ego has once again loomed large, this time in eastern Europe. Particularly now, this is a time to seek inspiration. The story of Robert the Bruce and the spider is famous. Robert was crowned King of the Scots in 1306 AD and eventually led Scotland to victory and gain Scottish independence against the English. But things weren’t always so sunny for King Robert, and that’s where the spider comes into the story. After suffering defeat against the English, Robert was forced into hiding. Legend has it that when Robert’s spirits were broken, he took refuge in a cave. While sitting in that cave, he noticed a small spider attempting to weave a web. The spider tried and failed over and over again. Each time the spider fell, it climbed back up to try once more. Finally, the spider’s silk took hold, and the spider managed to spin a web. By observing this and reflecting upon it, Robert the Bruce was inspired to see himself reflected in the spider’s struggle and ultima...

 Dear Reader, Life seems to contain constant contradictions and perhaps the most obvious is the situation of the world today, further provoking the question, "With so much suffering prevalent in the world, why - if there is a God - is God not doing anything about it?" So now we have the situation in the Ukraine with what we must take to be unwarranted suffering being applied to its citizens, and yet the man sitting on the Russian throne seems to be utterly unfeeling about their plight. We watch on, wondering, "What next?", and perhaps asking, "What are we to understand from all that has been building up, particularly since the start of the Millennium?" I choose to take William Blake's view in his quote above.  For me, there is a satisfactory explanation as a result of becoming more aware of the history, knowledge and sciences that have existed in India for countless years. In the situation that exists, I point to the Indian knowledge that we are now ex...

Dear Reader, My last four posts have talked a lot about India and how its advanced civilisation of thousands of years ago influenced the rest of the world, as recently as within the last 500 years. And yet we are generally unmindful of that influence; we do not acknowledge it even if we know about it. Yet that wisdom is still there in the place of its origin, India. Now, why is this such an important issue and not just a lesson about history? It is so important because we in the West have only absorbed the end product of India's wisdom, in its numerical system and sciences in general. We have absorbed them as facts and have ignored the basis from which those facts emerged so very long ago and so far away. The essential corollary to those facts is the wisdom teaching itself, and if we have ignored that wisdom teaching while accepting only that which we have taken to be practically useful, surely we have missed something. What do I mean by that? Well, part of what I am alluding to is...

Dear Reader, This is a real "Where do I come from, Daddy?" story! There have been many plausible attempts to identify the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden and, after my research over the last three years, I can now present what seems to be (to me, at least) the most likely story. This account is based on a combination of two important sources, one ancient (again from India!) and one from modern research into an ancient source. Having discussed, in my last three posts, the topic of the importance of India in the development of western thought over a very long period of time, the question could be asked why it was that while Europe was apparently evolving out of a Stone Age, India (and Egypt for that matter) was in an advanced state of civilisation? The answer, partly at least, is because India and Egypt and surrounding lands were not in the grip of the Ice Age that caused the very northern parts of Europe to be uninhabitable for a long stretch of time. The various peopl...

Dear Reader, We have, clearly, mismanaged the resources of the earth, water and the sky. With all the universities and halls of knowledge that we enjoy in the West, just where have we gone wrong in our identification of Truth and how to apply it? Western education still appears to be telling us that everything we now know comes from the study and experimentation of the last four hundred years or so, based on rational thought. My previous two posts will have surely put a seed of doubt into the reader's mind, as, based on the sources of considerable evidence available, what I have written is correct, and that western knowledge is very much based on previous knowledge of great antiquity; that the source of that knowledge lies in India.  Even then, much of what India knew was unknown to the West until very recent times. And, very importantly, India knew (and knows) one more important aspect that the West has yet to address: how to live in balance with nature. Despite receiving such poo...