alxindia

An eclectic spiritual & inspirational place to heal, learn, feel & expand. Heart & soul first. Miraculous experiences from India as well as the life & times of a spiritual healer/teacher in the U.S. Miracles, saints, sages, gurus, healing, life & death... and more...!

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Henry V: Shakespeare's Discourse On The Subject Of Karma






 

[This article originally appeared in the August 2011 edition of Tiferet Journal]


As a long-time student of the Vedic tradition of ancient India, and of the Shakespeare plays, I hold the sincere conviction that William Shakespeare was an extraordinary yogic soul who incarnated in mid-1500s England.

My sense is that he came in that guise in order to play a beautifully scripted role on the global stage: to embed the living wisdom and knowledge traditions of ancient India in plays that would effect a creative, cultural and spiritual transformation of the Western world, for centuries to come.

There are many conflicting and legitimate schools of  thought about the authorship of the plays, with scholars claiming variously that Shakespeare, an undereducated country hack, couldn't possibly have had access to the lives of nobility, or even royalty, and thus couldn't have written so flawlessly about the dynamics that prevailed in those, or other strata of society that he handled, in the plays, so brilliantly and convincingly.  Many scholars suggest either Shakespeare was a front for different noblemen of the day who actually wrote the plays, or that he worked in tandem with a number of authors to create the staggeringly ingenious range of dramatic and emotional depth contained in those works.  

All of these theories are plausible explanations of the otherwise almost incomprehensible achievement of unsurpassed depth, insight, dramatic capability, pure poetry, relationship of the supernatural world to the natural, and commentary on the span of human experience, from countless young lovers to the lofty corridors of English royal power found in Shakespeare's works. And yet -- none of these varied and well-reasoned arguments have ever been substantiated to the definitive satisfaction of Shakespeare lovers, students or scholars. 

There is plenty of mystery surrounding the Bard of Avon; his personal history, his education, his genius, and his plays.

None the least of the mysteries shrouding Shakespeare is this: How is it possible that one man, no matter how personally gifted and intelligent, could possibly have created so many potent, impactful plays that have reached across centuries to touch the hearts and thrill the minds of millions of people world-wide, on myriad levels?

My own conclusion is there's another strong (and simpler, albeit more fantastical-sounding) possibility: that Shakespeare, as a remarkably capable yogic soul, was an enlightened character -- with an open, flowing access to the cosmic Intelligence. And that the consciousness in him was sufficiently awake that it could access whatever information or details about human life it needed, instantly, in order to create luminous, extraordinary, unforgettable plays. It makes sense that a divine character of that stature could access a full range, from the most mundane to transcendent truths, readily, including a massive insight into the dynamics of human psychology, and blend it all together seamlessly in order to teach certain fundamental spiritual principles to a young and evolving Western world.

In ancient India, the words 'saint' (meaning an enlightened soul) and 'poet' were synonymous, and it's not uncommon to find the illumined words of sages taking the form of poems. Although not all great saints were literally poets, the yogis were (and still are) famous for speaking simple phrases and sentences that function on many layers of meaning, simultaneously, depending on the depth and inner consciousness awareness of the listeners.

When Paramahansa Yogananda, the much-beloved yogi from Bengal who spent much of his life in the West, mentioned to a few of his innermost students that he had indeed been William Shakespeare, in a past life, that news probably didn't come as much of a shock to his intimate devotees. 

Yogananda, for whom English was very much a second language, was famous for using words that were unfamiliar to his students, and when they would protest, "But Master, that's not an English word!" his response was to laugh, assure them it was, tell them to look it up.... and inevitably the word in question would be an archaic one, meaning precisely what Yogananda intended in the appropriate context. 

As if this weren't mischievous enough a bow to a former life and its contributions to the spiritual literature in the world, Yogananda's general guidelines to his students, for a healthy spiritual life, included his recommendation that they should read the Shakespeare plays!

Why would an Indian yogi, formally fairly uneducated in the English language, recommend that spiritual students should be familiar with Shakespeare?

The answer lies in content: there are striking similarities to be found, between the themes found in stories and myths from Vedic India, especially the Puranas, and those found in Shakespeare's body of work.  The Puranas are full of descriptions of the dynamics that prevail between the natural world and the supernatural world (interwoven, the one in the other) -- it is worthy to note that Shakespeare is a master at weaving supernatural concepts, characters, and events into nearly every play.

The Vedic stories were concerned with the major energy mechanisms in this creation, and used drama (the 'lila', or 'play', in Sanskrit) to illustrate the principles of these mechanisms; chief among them being karma (action-to-reaction), kama (desire), and kala (time).

It is with an illustration of the role of karma in the plays that this essay is concerned --  the simple principle of action to reaction (like Newton's Third Law Of Motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.").  Although every Shakespeare play serves as a treatise on the laws and principles, ramifications and applications of karma, a particular excerpt from Henry V is a glaring example of a discussion (and instruction) about karma and how it operates in human lives.

In this passage from Act IV, Scene 1, the king, Henry V, is going about in disguise the night before a major battle, and talking with random members of his troops, to sound out their mood and inspiration levels before the morning's fight (what will become known, historically, as the Battle of Agincourt).

Amongst the random characters he encounters, this discussion evolves about who is culpable, if the soldiers are serving in the king's army -- are they responsible for all the harm they do? Whose responsibility is it, finally?   Is the king ultimately the one who has to bear the woes of their deaths, maimings, and loss to their families if the battle doesn't go well?   And what if the royal cause that they're fighting for isn't a just cause -- does that tip the karmic scales against the individual soldiers? 

Even resorting to the style of parables (an obviously Biblical device, but also one long-standing method employed by yogis and sages), Shakespeare lays out a clear commentary on a few aspects of the inner workings of karma, about as simply as one can do...

KING HENRY V

I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here
alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's
minds: methinks I could not die any where so
contented as in the king's company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.

WILLIAMS

That's more than we know.

BATES

Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know
enough, if we know we are the king's subjects: if
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes
the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.

KING HENRY V

So, if a son that is by his father sent about
merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the
imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be
imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a
servant, under his master's command transporting a
sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in
many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant's
damnation: but this is not so: the king is not
bound to answer the particular endings of his
soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of
his servant; for they purpose not their death, when
they purpose their services. Besides, there is no
king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to
the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all
unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them
the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;
some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of
perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with
pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have
defeated the law and outrun native punishment,
though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to
fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance;
so that here men are punished for before-breach of
the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where
they feared the death, they have borne life away;
and where they would be safe, they perish: then if
they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of
their damnation than he was before guilty of those
impieties for the which they are now visited. Every
subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's
soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in
the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every
mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death
is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained:
and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think
that, making God so free an offer, He let him
outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach
others how they should prepare.

WILLIAMS

'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon
his own head, the king is not to answer it.


There are many profound points about the role and mechanism of karma, of the action-to-reaction, in this passage.

Similar to messages found in the Bhagavad Gita (itself a famous section of the Indian epic scripture, The Mahabharata, which also takes place on a battlefield), Henry's parables point to the greatness of doing one's duty -- and in that sense, absolution from responsibility for the fruits of those actions -- in the service of a greater good. 

However, his strict analysis is that whatever karmic balance sheet an individual brought, from their lives before, to the battlefield, it must get worked out, there. 

"... some peradventure have on them
the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;
some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of
perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with
pillage and robbery."


Even if these men have avoided those particular karmic acts coming due, up to this point in their lives, those actions are still on their balance sheets, waiting to be paid.  Even if they've "defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance..."

The battlefield, to Henry (and to Shakespeare) thus becomes an amplified pressure cooker of karmas coming to fruition rapidly, and, with surgical precision, the immediate reaction coming to balance their previous actions.

The act of war, itself, then, to Shakespeare, is always a mechanism of karma -- in that it will show, clearly, each man his own karmic reflection accurately, on the battlefield. 

The whole passage, like those found in scriptures from ancient India, invokes the metaphor of the battlefield but is richly steeped in another, much deeper layer of meaning: advice for a life well-lived.  In this sense, the 'battlefield' becomes the stage upon which every life is played out, full of valour and violence, triumph and tragedy, conflict and heroism;  it is the story of life and death. It is the stage of challenges and their resolutions.

Henry's final advice, after explaining something of the mechanism of duty and individual karma, is to instruct his soldiers to wash out their consciences before going into the battle, to in effect make a reckoning of their lives, and acknowledge their mistakes to that point -- so that they can die with a clean conscience, if death is to be their fate that day.

Otherwise, if they survive, they've already done the hard, honest work of examining themselves and asking forgiveness for their mistakes, so they can then go on to live lives in clear, free state of mind and heart, able to share that process of cleansing and self-reckoning with others they encounter in the future.

This approach to living (and dying) is highly practical spiritual advice -- and some variation of it can be found in nearly every spiritual tradition in the world, including the Twelve Step programs (by way of a contemporary example).  In the Vedic tradition, yogis and sages will routinely recommend this kind of simple inner process, as a central kind of meditation, for any human being to follow -- whether they are spiritually inclined, meditators, or not at all involved in spiritual pursuits -- in order to live a more peaceful, centered, functional life. 

Although Shakespeare recorded this advice in the 1500s, and the Vedas thousands of years before that, its relevance as a simple recipe for a peaceful life today shouldn't be underestimated.

Taking a clear end-of-the-day inventory of ourselves, daily, acknowledging mistakes we've made or actions that could've been better, and asking heartful forgiveness (from God, our higher selves, or however we consider the universal force of creation) for anything we did that was harmful to others -- either with our conscious or unconscious awareness -- is an instant mechanism through which negative karmas can be dissolved. 

It's a highly useful and practical spiritual practice of unburdening, at the end of the day, so each of us can walk a little freer the next day, and, if so moved, in Henry V's words, "to teach others how they should prepare."





Monday, April 15, 2013

best. $43. ever. straight from the heart.



UCBK's Free Friday Lunch, in the Parish Hall
at St. Michael's Catholic Church, Boulder Creek, CA


A couple weeks ago, a huge surprise happened, for UCBK volunteers staffing the Free Friday Lunch program we offer at St. Michael's Catholic Church every Friday, for the homeless and needy in our community....

Many of the lunch attendees have been counting on the free lunch provided by UCBK, every Friday, since November of 2009. 

The lunch is an all-volunteer effort, mostly funded by UCBK but also out-of-pocket from the kind volunteers. It is truly a labor of love, from the Little Temple That Could. 

(Our stalwart volunteers have been cooking, serving, setting up and cleaning up for this beautiful 'banquet' of a lunch, for all these years.) We've served in excess of 6000 nourishing, love-filled, warm lunches since the program's inception.

The folks who come to the lunch are regulars who attend 'for the great food and company,' as Gary, a man who takes the bus for over an hour -- each way -- to attend the lunch told the Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter writing a story about UCBK and our work.

After years of UCBK's dedicated volunteers giving love and food to the homeless and needy in our community -- the community of homeless and needy decided to give back.

They invited the Free Lunch staff to a 'thank you' party at a local coffeehouse, just after the lunch. 

What our staff DIDN'T realize was that this party was more than a nice gathering of happy grateful people, with music provided by The Sand Band, a group of Free Lunch Friday regular attendees.....



After the Sand Band played their music -- they passed the hat for donations --

AS A BENEFIT FOR UCBK.

These beautiful homeless and needy people in our community wanted to pour the love back to UCBK!

They collected -- from their fellow homeless and needy friends -- a total of $43. 

And gave it as a donation so UCBK can keep doing its work, and keep our facility.

There are no words for this unbelievable kindness, and generosity.  Everyone was in tears.  I'm in tears again, just writing about it. 

And we all know -- at UCBK -- that energetically, this $43 is one of the most potent, powerful donations we will ever receive...  and that the immense love it represents may very well be the cornerstone of our fund-raising success to keep the UCBK facility going.

It is precious.  That $43 came straight from the hearts of people who have nothing. 

& that is everything!!!!!!

I wanted to share this story as an example of the miracles that happen, every day, through UCBK's work in our local area.  

And to show just how much, how very much, our simple work over years is felt -- like ripples in a pond -- in our community of homeless and needy people.

You can see a video of the lunch here, and another video of our healing work with the homeless & our local veterans' community by clicking here...

& click here to read about our efforts to keep the UCBK temple facility going in the face of a proposed sale by the  landlady, who really would like to sell it to UCBK... all that stands in the way is about $230,000. 

donations are always welcome!


& thank you for reading this story. (& sharing it, if you feel moved to do so.)




healing heartbreak requires a soul doctor on duty - & knowledge of the Womb Chakra





"We have many hospitals for the bodies, even for the minds.  But where are the hospitals for the broken hearts?  We need to create those."
  - Sri Kaleshwar



healing heartbreak.  it is such a huge subject.

what's really implied in healing heartbreak is a soul healing.

how to heal the soul? what is the soul? it's easy to heal bodies, minds, even the emotional heart. but what about the inner essence of a human being, the soul?  what medicine heals heartbreak?


a lot of people recoil at the term heartbreak -- if they're not in the throes of a fresh relationship break-up, then 'heartbreak' doesn't apply to them, they think.

but 'heartbreak' isn't limited to romantic break-ups and disillusionments.  heartbreak, the way Kaleshwar meant it and the way I've come to understand it, includes any heart-shattering, painful event or trauma.

heartbreak can include:
  • romantic breakups
  • death of a loved one
  • extreme loss of any kind
  • betrayal in business or relationships
  • professional disappointment
  • childhood trauma, abuse, circumstances (like growing up in a war zone)
  • military combat experiences
  • abuse from a mate or loved one
  • religious/spiritual heartbreak
the list goes on and on. 

and the ripples that occur from heartbreak -- symptoms that can include depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, eating disorders, suicidal behaviors, addictions, co-dependent relationships... -- these negative experiences can reverberate throughout a whole lifetime, and affect all of our subsequent judgments, actions, and relationships.

we tend to choose unhealthy habits and relationships, once the heart's been seriously broken.

the deepest heartbreak 
but the deep -- the deepest -- heartbreak I know in humanity is the unspoken, often un-aware pain of separation from the divine source.

all other symptoms, in my opinion, spring from this initial pain. the real 'original sin' -- not a sin at all, just a karma -- is the forgetting, like a baby once the umbilical cord is cut, about the super-connectedness to the cosmic, divine, universe that is each of us, inside.

so how to heal that? the Greek word holos, is the origin of the English 'healed'. it means 'making whole.'

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the TM founder/guru) did a beautiful translation of some of the verses of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the epic scriptures of Hindu India. this line stands out:

"yoga is the disunion of the union with sorrow."
the union with sorrow, one could say, is the human condition, generally.

it is the self that believes itself to be bound to this body, this personality, this life. it is the self in total pain about mortality -- "one day I will die, I will be no more." and the self that has forgotten its inner, immortal consciousness, an inner spark (soul) that has already lived countless lifetimes in many forms, and will continue to incarnate until that yoga, that union with the god consciousness, is restored while in a human form.

which brings me to one major source of restoring that wholeness, that healing of the soul -- a chakra not mentioned in conventional books or discussions on the subject, because it's been hidden in the ancient knowledge from millenniae ago -- the Holy Womb Chakra.

the Holy Womb Chakra
the knowledge about this chakra in the human energy system comes from a 7000-year-old manuscript written by the rishis of ancient India.

basically, every human being (regardless of gender) has a Womb Chakra - it is beyond all chakras, and located roughly where the human female's womb area is. it is the direct link, the direct channel, to Mother Divine's creation capacity (which is why every woman can create life, literally creating a soul inside the womb). men link to the Womb Chakra of Mother Divine, energetically, through their own physical mother's womb chakra. (they are one step removed from the direct creation energy of Mother Divine.)

the Womb Chakra is where the karmas of a person's soul are stored -- lifetime to lifetime to lifetime. they come 'due,' as it were, through the Womb Chakra operating with Kala, Time.

the human soul goes up and down through all the chakras, but most of the time, resides in the Womb Chakra. if a Womb Chakra is shaky or damaged, the soul is confused and doesn't know its proper self/home/creativity energy. 




how does a Womb Chakra get shaky or damaged?

#1 cause -- by giving or receiving heartbreak (on any level.)

#2 -- by having an excessive amount of sexual partners in one lifetime -- each sexual partner makes a soul-to-soul bond, Womb Chakra to Womb Chakra. every person is bonded at the soul level with any partner they ever had, and that means whatever the other person is feeling, so are you. over time, and different partners, this makes the Womb Chakra super-shaky, and the soul is totally confused, not knowing where it really belongs.

when illness or catastrophic accident (like a deadly snake-bite) happens, if one has the capacity to heal the womb chakra in another person, the situation will balance out, and fast. illness is a sign that the womb chakra isn't balanced. so are continual heartbreaks or sequences of negative events.

practical example: a child comes up with a terminal disease. they never did any bad karmas in this lifetime. they're innocent.  but yet, they are super-ill.  how can we begin to understand this, from an energy point of view?  

a catastrophic illness means, the person's womb chakra is disturbed from other lifetimes, and those karmas are coming due now. (who knows who among us were Roman hordes, pillaging and raping our way across Europe and Africa? or Ghengis Khan's minions... or.......?)  and it can be healed through strengthening, and purifying, the Womb Chakra. 





the Holy Womb Chakra from the ancient knowledge of India
there is a whole system of powerful holy prayers, a spiritual process, that restores the integrity of the Womb Chakra over time. we were given this technology in 2006, from my teacher Kaleshwar, and I have been practicing, first, then teaching it, ever since. and the results are incredible.

people's relationships with family, friends, and mates -- they smooth out when the Womb Chakra techniques are practiced, over time. even really awful, disconnected, turbulent ones. 


the relationship with one's own inner self and divine spark -- strengthened unbelievably, astronomically. 

people finding their proper soul mate -- happens as a result of the Womb Chakra being purified. 

illnesses washing out, emotional disturbances washing out -- and, most important of all, the underlying heartbreak washing out.

curious to know more? 
you can find a link to the Womb Chakra information here at the UCBK site,
 and at the Sri Kaleshwar website as well.  

I teach the full Womb Chakra knowledge as a workshop and/or webinar, and have pre-recorded teachings available for purchase at the UCBK site, as well. 

Womb Chakra Healings - 9 sessions of 9 minutes each....
later, Sri Kaleshwar empowered a number of students to accelerate the healing and rebalancing of the Holy Womb Chakra in others, by giving nine healing sessions with a 9-minute transmission of energy, to 'reset' the integrity of the Womb Chakra.    

this series of healing is a kind of short-cut into the strengthening and purification of the Womb Chakra. 

these Womb Chakra healing sessions are a profound journey into the foundation of healing, as the layers and layers of old traumas, karmas, and vague pain (from who knows when?) are released, systematically, over the nine healing sessions.  

if you are interested in receiving the nine Womb Chakra healing sessions, you can contact me through  the UCBK website about personal healings, and we can begin this powerful work together.

of course, whatever I've written here is only the tip of a Very Big Iceberg on this immense subject -- but it's a good start.   = )

Thursday, April 04, 2013

religions and spirituality: why can't we all just get along?


someone asked in a discussion group online about why religions and spirituality don't seem to get along so well. 

these are a few of my thoughts, just off the top of my head:


I think the difference between religions and spirituality comes down to the devolution of real knowledge.

what I mean is this -- every religion we can think of had its origins with an amazing, divine soul (like a Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, various Holy Mothers, etc., whomever you like). these characters were bridges between the human experiences in this world and the Truth-with-a-capital-T, the immortal, unchanging, blissful universal something behind the stage where the human dramas are played out.

because these enlightened few KNEW both realities, the Truth and the illusion of this world, they could operate in both. I think Jesus' comments about 'be in this world but not of it" speak quite clearly to this idea.

however -- the immediate students of these masters didn't realize the innermost truths for themselves, and so were reduced to imitating the masters, or needing lists of rules and regulations about how the Truth might operate.

within one generation or two at the most, the cosmic game of Telephone ensues, the living, breathing, dynamic spiritual knowledge imparted from the bonafide divine characters devolves into dogma, empty ritual, belief systems, moral codes and so on.

and le voila, religions are born -- collections of rules and beliefs that may or may not (mostly not, in my opinion/experience) bear much relationship to the original teachings/messages/modes of the teacher who brought the initial spiritual spark into this world.

and -- added to the spice -- many of the world religions have differing points of view. plus, of course, the human tendency for power struggles, dominance and stature gets overlaid on the original teachings, too.

so, the religions wind up at odds with one another.

and often threatened by the presence of 'spirituality,' which to my understanding really means researching deeply, internally, on these great cosmic questions starting with "who am I, really?" and then restoring something of the dynamism back to the process of spiritual/religious experience. not only accepting the teachings and dogmas at face value, but researching for oneself.

that's my two rupees for today. = )