Ancient UFOs of India

Lets start this post with a small assumption. Lets assume that the tales and legends of Ramayana were more of a historical curiosity than mythology. That Ram, Sita and Laxman did spend some 14 years in jungles, and actually covered the entire length of the Indian subcontinent, reached Rameshwaram, prayed to Shiva, and then fought and won the epic war with Ravana. That Ramayana and Ramcharit Manas actually talk of history and not of some mysterious and hypothetical tales, though I personally still believe it to be history itself.

Anyways, having made this small assumption for the non-believers, lets move directly to the day when Rama has just defeated Ravana, the day, we celebrate even today as Dusshehra. Now, Ram was a pious king, so he would have made sure that the bodies of all soldiers were ceremoniously cremated. He also waited for Vibhishana to be crowned king of Lanka, or whatever remained of it. He would have bid adieu to Sugriva, Jamavant, Nala, Neela, and others. All of this could have taken a day, or two, when Rama along with Laxman and Sita would have started back for Ayodhya. All of them reach Ayodhya and the entire town broke into celebrations, the day, we still celebrate as Diwali. Which means, it took all three of them some 18-19 days to travel back. This certainly seems to be a bit far fetched, especially knowing that they crossed sea, and high altitude mountains and dense forests, not to mention they didnt have any maps. How did they do it then? Ramayana mentions a certain Pushpak Vimana, but could they fly in those days?

Year:1895;Place:Chowpatty, Mumbai
A mid-size crowd which included come general public, certain journalists and government officers waited with bated breath as a Sanskrit scholar by the name of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade performed nothing short of a miracle. Eight years before Orville Wright proved that it was possible for a 'manned heavier than air machine to fly', Talpade had created an aircraft designed purely on Vedic writings and had it take off unmanned in full view of the crowd. The aircraft, named Marutsakha-friend of the air, flew some 1500 feet before it came crashing down. The technology used by Talpade, mercury bombardment unit using solar cells, is now being deployed by NASA in building spacecrafts for future

I brought up the above two examples to prove a simple point, our ancient ancestors did have the knowledge and intelligence to be able to build a proper flying manned aircraft, Vimana.

Not only the Ramayana, Mahabharat talks of Krishna fighting in sky with his enemy. Samaragna Sutradhar talks about the semantics of building an aircraft. There are 230 stanzas talking of construction, take-off, cruising, normal and forced landings and even collision with birds. In 1875, Vaimanik Shastra, perhaps the most descriptive of all the texts dedicated to aircraft building was discovered in an ancient Indian Temple. The text was written by Sage Bharadwaj, who is known to have taught neo-modern sciences like aerospace sciences in his Ashrams.

The Vaimanik Shastra comprehensively explains the methods of steering, precautions for long distance travels, and a way to switch from fuel to solar energy. It has diagrams depicting building an aircraft, mentions apparatus which would not catch fire and can sustain at high altitude, and is based completely on verses and stanzas from the Vedas. The fuel used was a "yellowish-white liquid" and the text even talks about combustion engines and pulse-jet engines, a technology which was discovered not a long time ago. As per the text, there are 32 secrets which a pilot needs to learn and such a pilot could fly a plane, immobilize a plane, make his plane invisible to others and even destroy enemy planes.

There seems to be no doubt that Vimanas were powered by some sort of "anti-gravity." Vimanas took off vertically, and were capable of hovering in the sky, like a modern helicopter.


 It is interesting to note, that the Nazis developed the first practical pulse-jet engines for their V-8 rocket "buzz bombs." Hitler and the Nazi staff were exceptionally interested in ancient India and Tibet and sent
expeditions to both these places yearly, starting in the 30's, in order to gather esoteric evidence that they did so, and perhaps it was from these people that the Nazis gained some of their scientific information.

A piece of writing was found recently, at Easter Island near South America. The writing,still undeciphered is strikingly similar to texts found in Mohenjo Daro civilizations. Ramayana and other ancient texts related to Rama also talk of flying Vimanas to far lands in the pursuit of strengthening their military warfare.

Rig Veda and Yajur Veda comprise of hymns which talk in detail about Vimanas. The difficulty which scientists face today is the mention of a number of alloys and metals, which the historians are not able to decipher and understand.

I have often seen people wondering and even laughing at such knowledge, claiming it all to be nothing but a hypothetical imagery of ancient science. Why would ancient Indians not publish all this knowledge and keep it to themselves? The reason was pretty simple, and understandable. The knowledge was highly futuristic, and dangerous if fell into the wrong hands.It was for this reason that the knowledge was never published and was  taught to a specific group of students.

Needless to say, Indian ancient science was one of the most advanced, and highly futuristic, even when measured against today's parameters. This was the land of great intellectuals and philosophers. The various dynasties and empires which ruled India, robbed Indians off the intent to think beyond the obvious. The knowledge of the Vedas, the intelligence of the ancient Indians, is still out there, all around us. The reason, why Vedas should be considered more than religious books, and be rightfully called the powerhouse of knowledge.

With that I wish to end this post. The intelligence of ancient Indians, and the knowledge of Vedas, something I am a huge fanboy of. Would like to touch more of such sciences in coming posts. Thanks again for all the appreciation shown in terms of comments, page views and likes on FB. Your appreciation keeps me going.
Namaste!

Coming up with a book based on Indian history/mythology.
Please join the Facebook page and invite others as well to do the same.
Please help me promote the book and the page and make it a huge success.

Please click here and like the page which comes up - Finders, Keepers

The United Colors of Holi

Namaste and welcome to the third post of my blog. I received some very positive feedback for the two of my earlier blog posts and that pushed me to write another one soon enough. The feedback in terms of page views, replies, and online feedback was indeed very boosting and I would take this moment to thank all the visible as well as silent appreciation the readers of the blog showered me with.

I wanted to write about something which I very much believe in, a belief you can term me as a fanboy of, but I would reserve it for my next blog post. As much as I wanted to write about it, I felt I needed some more analysis, and now that the entire nation is going to witness yet another chapter of one of the biggest cultural extravaganza, the festival of Holi, I decided to write something about it.

Just like other major pan-Indian symbols, the festival of Holi has also been discussed, the tales being told by our grandmothers, the symbolism explained by our parents innumerable times. I wish to touch upon those known and certain unknown attributes of the celebration of colors, called Holi.

It all really did start from the burning of Holika, the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashyap. The brother of Hiranyakashyap had been killed by Vishnu, and he had despised Vishnu since then. Much to his horror, his son Prahlad turned out to be a devout worshipper of Vishnu. Worried that his own son would make his subjects go back to openly worshipping Vishnu, he decided to kill his son. His sister, Holika had a divine drape which would never burn, so she wore the drape and sat on a pyre of burning wood. The drape, mystically, flew down from Holika to Prahlad, and Holika was burnt instead, thus the name, Holi.

Symbolically, Holi marks the victory of devotion and the devotee over evil. A night before Holi is celebrated, a pyre of woods is burnt, symbolizing the anniversary of burning of Holika thousands of years ago.

The tradition, then a small entity, celebrated only around the kingdom of Hiranyakashyap, merged with another similar sounding tradition, one of them being Hola, which means offering oblations to God in anticipation of a good harvest, Holi being celebrated at the onset of Spring season, marks the beginning of a new calendar year.

Another legend, which further got merged with the burning of pyre during Holi, was the burning of Kamadev by Shiva's third eye. Shiva had gone into deep meditation after the death of his wife Sati, and Parvati insisted Kamadev to bring Shiva out of the deep meditation. Shiva, enraged, opened his third eye and burnt Kamadev, Holika pyre thus symbolizing control of all worldly desires by a devotee.

For hundreds of years, the festival was celebrated as thus and there was no use of colors by then, until came the legends of Krishna. 

Krishna was dark in color, and in contrast to his skin color, Radha was very fair. So, Krishna's foster mother Yashoda used to apply colors on Radha's face during the Holi festivities as a prank. Krishna took a cue out of it, and started applying dark colors to all his and Radha's friends simultaneously. The playful pranks by Krishna soon garnered tremendous acceptance among the subjects, and this is marked the beginning of playing colors on Holi.

These were mostly the legendary tales associated with Holi. The festival comprises of further symbolic and scientific attributes.

Celebrated at the onset of the colorful spring, and to mark the end of the New Year, the colors symbolize the beginning of the new harvest season and an ode to the colors of spring.

As per Hindu ideology, there are seven basic Hindu gods.

1. Dreaming force - Indra (god of dreaming)

2. Illusory force - Shakti (god of illusion)

3. Voluntary force - Brahma (god of creation/new life)

4. Semi voluntary force - Vishnu (god of preservation)

5. Involuntary force - Shiva (god of determination)

6. Status altering force - Shani (god of status change)

7. Compulsive force - Yama (god of compulsion)

Out of these seven, only Shiva and Vishnu are the ones which help us live a life of discipline. The rest of the gods, who are symbolized by various colors, viz. gold for Brahma, black for Shani, etc., deviate our lives from a disciplined approach. Hence the celebration of Holi, which is a symbolic outlet of all other forces, marked by playing and applying colors symbolizing those Gods and those forces.

In ancient India, this used to be the season where the germs of certain common skin diseases, like chicken pox, were majorly prevalent. The doctors of those times invented Gulaal, which is known to kill germs which cause skin-related diseases.

In certain cultures, the burning of wood and leaves on a full moon night already existed. Older leaves and wood being burnt symbolized the onset of time for new leaves and new wood to arrive. People smeared ash all over their bodies and celebrated the festivity. 

Colorful days, solemn rituals, joyous celebrations - Holi is a cheerful occasion. In earlier times, people used to collect flowers of 'Tesu' trees from forests and spread out on mats. Once dried, they were ground to fine powder, and were then used to play Holi. A festival where all differences among individuals are resolved, people diving on to sweet festivities, Holi is a festival worth experiencing and celebrating in your life.

With that, I wish to end my third blog post. I am still keeping the place reserved for my next blog post, something I very much want to write about. Till then, Namaste, and wishing you all a very Happy Holi

Coming up with a book based on Indian history/mythology.
Please join the Facebook page and invite others as well to do the same.
Please help me promote the book and the page and make it a huge success.

Please click here and like the page which comes up - Finders, Keepers

The Multifaceted Om

Namaste!!!
A very warm welcome to the second post of my blog. I received very positive comments for my first post 'Namaste' from the online community as well as a few people around me. The positive comments helped me to come up with my second post, and I really hope you find this likeable as well as informative. Thanks once again for liking the earlier post.

When I am bringing up the topic of symbols, and pan-Indian symbols in particular, one can’t help but take up one of the most diverse, sacrosanct, and multifaceted symbols of all times, around the entire world. The diverse faces this symbol takes up, the flexibility it offers, the acceptability it boasts of, and the respect it commands, certainly makes it one of the most divine symbols of the world.

So much has been written and said about this symbol, that to take it up as a topic to discuss certainly has its demerits. And thanks to movies like Koi Mil Gaya, every other person seems to know a bit or more about AUM or OM. Every time I would bring up the topic of AUM, the other person would snap up, "Ohh yes I have seen Koi Mil Gaya, AUM has all the frequencies of the entire Universe". Well aware that most of it is already known, I would like to take up the lesser known and lesser talked about attributes of the symbol.

As per Hindu sacred texts, before the inception of the world, there was nothingness all around, also called Shunyaksha. No wind, no light, no sky, and no realms. Then came the sound of AUM, and from that sound, everything else evolved, a prime reason why every single atom is said to be vibrating with the frequency of AUM.

The symbol thus encompasses whatever has existed in the past, whatever exists in the present and whatever will exist in the future. AUM is also termed as 'Adi Anadi', which has no beginning and which has no end. Needless to say, AUM is said to be the frequency of God.

Literally. AUM is made up of three sounds, where the first letter 'A' denotes birth or creation, the power of Brahma. U denotes preservation, the power of Vishnu, and M denotes destruction, the power of Shiva. Together, the three form up the entire existence cycle of the earth, the divine energy. As per some sacred texts, it represents another important triad, the earth, the atmosphere and the heaven. Another triad which AUM represents is the concept of A-kara, which denotes everything that has form like the trees and the water, U-kara, which denotes everything that is formless like wind or fire, and M-kara, which denotes everything which is neither with form nor without form like the darkness. Needless to say, the prime emphasis is on AUM being the sound of the entire existence.

Symbolically, the symbol consists of three curves together, along with one another semi-circle and a dot. The larger curve(Curve 1) symbolizes the waking state, or the jagrut-awastha of the human mind. The larger size of the curve indicates that this is the most common state of the human mind. The second curve(Curve 2) denotes the deep sleep, or the sushupt-awastha of the human mind. The third curve(Curve 3) denotes the state between the deep sleep and the waking state, the dream state or the swapna-awastha. These are the three states of an individual's consciousness representing the entire physical phenomenon, a fact well exploited by the movie Inception.

The dot denotes the utter quiet, peaceful and blissful state of the human consciousness, the state where all the three other states are illuminated. The semi-circle(Curve 4) denotes maya, and separates the dot from the three states of consciousness. Needless to say, it is maya which separates the consciousness from reaching the highest state of bliss. The maya semi-circle, as can be seen, never touches the dot, it always touches the three states of consciousness.

A more interesting insight would be the way AUM is pronounced, A starts from the back of the mouth, thus encompassing every spoken sound from the mouth. M is shaped or created by the closing of the lips, so M encompasses the completion of all sounds. And U encompasses every sound in between, symbolized by the shape of the lips. AUM thus encompasses all the spoken sounds.

The symbolism would just not stop there, AUM is such multifaceted and such diverse, it represents a number of other important triads, like the time (past, present and future), the seasons (spring, summer and winter), periods (morning, midday and evening)...the list is endless.

The divinity of AUM does not stop at it being a sacred symbol or a mystical sound. AUM has as many scientific and medical significations. According to a number of scientific studies, when AUM is chanted ten times in lower pitch, internalized attention is produced. In simpler terms, the attention of the being turns inwards, thus improving concentration over a regular period of time.  The mind experiences a state of calm and peace, thus decreasing anxiety and depression. Sleep pattern is improved as a result of psychological relaxation.
When one chants AUM, he creates within himself a state of trance. One such scientific study on AUM is given here http://paper.ijcsns.org/07_book/200901/20090151.pdf

Now, let’s take a moment and make a slight assumption. Let’s assume the symbolism, the interpretations, the triads are mere assumptions made by our ancestors and sacred texts. Let’s assume the divinity of AUM or the knowledge of the diversity of AUM, the scientific and medical implications of chanting AUM, were somehow known to our ancient Indian scientists, or was already a widely accepted notion during those times. Maybe the intellectuals of those times saw the potential of AUM, particularly in the field of Neuroscience and in an attempt to bring the chanting of AUM to practice, made it a mandate to pronounce AUM at the beginning of every Vedic Chant. Let’s assume the mystical attributes of AUM were already discovered, the intellectuals of those times only built up its ascendancy attaching it to every sacred aspect of worship.

 I usually walk my way from home to office, and as soon as I am out of my home, I see restlessness and rush almost everywhere. People trying to reach their office as soon as they can, overcrowding the elevators, working for long stretched hours, and then coming back home to complete their quota of sleep. Sooner than later, hypertension and other related malfunctions crop up and all the hard-earned money is paid in the form of medical bills. Chanting AUM won’t reduce the rush of life, but can certainly help in bringing back some peace back into the mind. I accept it’s hard to make a habit out of anything, specially chanting AUM, which is largely held as a religious phenomenon, and a large number of pan-modern Indians shy away from such acts, I would still request everyone to try this out once, it certainly has its benefits. And think of it, AUM may not be a purely religious aspect at all, it may be a purely scientific marvel, designed as religious phenomenon.

With that I would wish to end my second post of the blog. The posts which I have picked up till now may make me appear as a Hinduism-fanboy, but believe me I am not that big a fanboy. I actually am a fanboy of something else, a concept which I would like to touch upon in my next post. Till then, Namaste and keep chanting AUM.

Coming up with a book based on Indian history/mythology.
Please join the Facebook page and invite others as well to do the same.
Please help me promote the book and the page and make it a huge success.

Please click here and like the page which comes up - Finders, Keepers

Namaste

Namaste! A warm welcome to the first post of the blog. Honestly, writing is not my forte. I like symbols more, when a lot can be expressed without trying to waste a lot of energy in speaking or writing. Moreover, one can interpret and understand symbols in more than one way, which make them altogether very flexible.

Though this thought or the idea is not limited to symbols, in a similar way, an idea can be flown across from one mind to another, in the form of pictures, signs, and even subliminally.

Anyways, not to bore the visitors of my first blog post, I would like to start with what I have already started with. Namaste!

We go on living our lives practicing certain customs, follow certain traditions without even knowing or wanting to know the reason or the logic behind them. For me, every tradition or a custom has a reason, and though knowing it won’t stop me from doing it, or won’t force me into doing it, but certainly worth knowing what the inceptor of that tradition had in mind. Now, we all do a hand-folded Namaste whenever we meet someone elder, or when someone would visit our home. Ever thought why we do it? Anyone?

While there are various theories related to folded hands and the reasoning, each one of pretty much denote the same thing, respect.

Symbolically, one hand represents the soul of the bearer- or jeevatma, as it is called. The other hand represents param-atma, or the divine power. So, folding of hands is actually a Mudra, which symbolizes the union of jeevatma with Paramatma. The act denotes total surrender before the divine lord, and thus while praying, denotes total devotion to the lord. The Mudra is also known as 'Anjali Mudra'.

In cosmic terms, both the hands symbolically denote left forces and the right forces. While it would be wrong to term those as negative and positive forces, they in a way, can be termed two sides of the same coin. Folding hands denotes fusion of both the energies, where we are perfectly balanced between the two extreme forces while offering our prayers to the lord.

Literally, Namaste can be broken down into Namah and Te, which would mean I bow to you. Nama itself could be broken down to Na-Ma, where Na means negation and Ma means mine, Nama meaning 'not mine'. This symbolizes complete devotion to the Lord. The body, the soul, the entire existence is not mine. Ma also means death, Nama thus symbolizing immortality.

Physically, the act is much richer in symbolism. We touch all the five fingers of one hand, with the other. While the fingers of left hand denote the five senses of Karma, those on the right denote five organs of knowledge. As mentioned in the Bhagvad Gita, knowledge without action is incomplete, and action without knowledge is meaningless, the Namaste denotes completion of the union of knowledge and actions.

In some ways, Namaste is also equivalent to the Ardha-Narishwara form of Shiva. Two distinct forces unified by one symbol.

Now, in Hinduism, a guest is considered equivalent to God, so doing Namaste, in a way is symbolic of our respect for our guest. By doing a simple gesture, we not only demonstrate sheer respect, the entire setup of folding hands and uttering 'Namaste' is equivalent to chanting a Vedic Mantra.

Now, how does Namaste score over the more famous hand-shakes? Firstly, you never shake hands with God, you fold hands in front of him, and so Namaste symbolizes respect for the person. Moreover, a leader or a CEO won’t be able to shake hands with all his audience, or all his employees. A better way is to either wave his hands or fold them in a 'Namaste'. And now if you ask me, no one can write all the symbols or advantages of waving hands, when compared to Namaste.

So, go on, go along...meet new people, welcome new guests and do a Namaste......

Coming up with a book based on Indian history/mythology.
Please join the Facebook page and invite others as well to do the same.
Please help me promote the book and the page and make it a huge success.

Please click here and like the page which comes up - Finders, Keepers