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Racing the hare to finish line
All the power in the world cannot protect from mother nature's fury, says N Shakuntala Manay, who believes that America is in need of a soul today.

On my recent trip to the US I came across a book by Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat, and saw for the first time America through the eyes of an American.

The perception of prosperity, progress and material success that the US has achieved took a rear seat in the view of the author and I began to see our own country, India, catching up with the advanced West led by the US. It seemed to be the old fable of the tortoise and the hare, the tortoise slowly but surely drawing abreast of technological growth and development in the contemporary world.

Friedman, a three time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, appears to have picked up the title and inspiration for his book from the greens of the Karnataka Golf Club in Bangalore near the Airport. He sees numerical coincidences in world events: the ten forces that have flattened the world. The first flattening took place, according to him, on 09/11/1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. He says when the Twin Towers fell in Manhattan on 11/09/2001, the windows of the West opened to the utterly ugly truth that progress was being made at the cost of the spirit!

Friedman however, missed to record yet another mystical coincidence which took place 108 years ago, on 09/11/1893, when the saffron-robed monk Vivekananda addressed the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. His opening words- "Sisters and brothers of America," received a standing ovation of two to three minutes. At this convention the bell tolled ten times for the ten religions that had participated. Later Swami Vivekananda stated:

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long poisoned this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence... I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecution with the sword or the pen."

For a diabolically opposite reason the Twin Towers fell and the seed Swami Vivekananda tried to sow in the American mind for a universal spirit is yet to sprout, although he took Indian culture and its soul to America more than a century ago.

During the same trip, I visited two places; one was Galveston, (two hours drive from Houston in Texas State) a coastal town, which had experienced a hurricane in 1906 when 6,000 people were washed away.

The town was reconstructed with a 17 feet high levee against the invading sea. I was amazed to see this technological feat and thought that such technology was also needed now in our country to save our coastal people from another tsunami.

But as soon as I reached Bangalore, I read the news of the havoc wrecked by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, especially in New Orleans where the levees had crumbled like a cookie, exacting a heavy toll of human life. Now Galveston is hit by Hurricane Rita! That made me realise that mother nature's power flattens nations, poor and mighty, alike!

However, I was glad and enthused when I recalled my second visit to the "Self-Realisation Centre" in Encinitas, 30 miles away from San Diego, California. This hermitage was established by Paramahansa Yogananda. Here he wrote his well-known Autobiography of a Yogi. In a technologically progressive land, where people are familiar with terms like atom, electron, proton and neutron, he used terms he had coined like the 'lifetrons' and 'thoughtrons' of God in his annotation of the Bhagavat Geeta.

The essence of Indian culture lies in 'being and becoming', by tapping the perennial source of 'self'. Self is the open source of all beings. The power of knowledge has to be outsourced from within. Insourcing and information then become digital, personal as well as impersonal, and virtually one becomes He! The Centre offers courses on self-Realisation, kriya yoga, conducts satsang and weekend retreats.

Friedman and others, who are looking for technological clues to control typhoons in a tiny island-state like Singapore feel humiliated when tsunami-battered Sri Lanka offers aid to Katrina-hit victims! Eternal truths are valid for all time. I am reminded of the fable of a tiny mouse liberating a mighty tiger from the hunter's net! America needs a soul — the power of all sources.
This hermitage is most uniquely located over a cliff, the panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean stretches to the horizon, the garden is most meticulously maintained by the devotees.

The plants are well placed with little niches amidst woods. There are tiny water falls, manicured lawns and ponds with golden fish which are as old as 40 years. All this spontaneously creates a meditative mood.

Sunset instantly takes you to another world, bewitchingly capturing flashes of colours, which seem to come from the palette of the Creator. In this distilled atmosphere, the stilled spirit becomes poetic. The lightening of the troubled heart evokes unheard soulful songs that one hums to the humming bees. Butterflies flutter on colourful wings and we forget to think! Miraculously, one stands on the threshold of Eastern wisdom, on the sands of time, on the shores of space, feeling a spiritual presence.

This subtle power flattens one's self but also raises it to the height of the heavenly spirit, which lies within our own bosom.

(Courtesy Sunday Herald Articulations)

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