Here’s looking at me…

Ref FarzanaVersey #31

[#30 by harimau:

This post is in very bad taste and I must say unwarranted, for the person made a general comment.]

Well, he made a more direct and personal attack in an earlier post.

[I do wonder what happens to you sometimes...you seem to suddenly wake up to the ``hypocrisy``.]

Not at all. There are times when internet access in Chennai is bad and I am barely able to stay on-line for a few minutes.

[Did you not notice it earlier or were you too busy thinking about possibilities re. my past life?]

Possibilities regarding your past life, in particular gender, were trivially simple. ( I have been extremely good at test-taking. So answers leap out at me). As soon as you mentioned that I could be wrong about you being part of the harem, the thought came to my mind that in a past life you could have been an eunuch guarding the harem and now are pretending to be royalty. Not too far-fetched considering that we had the Slave Dynasty ruling Delhi before the Moghuls ;)

[I have seen the worst aspects of niceness - the two-facedness, the cussedness, the sweet sound bytes that mean nothing.]

Do you recongize these words? ;)

#30 by harimau:

This post is in very bad taste and I must say unwarranted, for the person made a general comment. I do wonder what happens to you sometimes...you seem to suddenly wake up to the ``hypocrisy``. Did you not notice it earlier or were you too busy thinking about possibilities re. my past life?

Come now, it is time to move on...

Ref puyu #24

You asked

[#22 by DRUMZ

``typical hindu indian ``?

Could you explain please?]

and he replied

[Ref DRUMZ #25
Puyu: I meant to say that his posts are typacally in support of hindusim and india because those are the systems he is born into. Such is the mentality of almost everyone on this site. The idiots blindly support the country and religion they were born into.]

This is grandstanding and you know it.

This idiot thinks that just because he is living in Canada or some such place where he is freezing his butt off, his skin has turned white and his thinking has become like a Westerner`s. No chance of that. You certainly will not hear of him turning into an Epicopalian or a Lutheran. On the other hand, you will be hearing about him in a couple of years when he would have assisted his father in cutting the throat of his sister for daring to wear clothing not resembling a large tent. His justification for that would be that he had attempted to read the riot act (aka The Koran) to her and only after repeated disobedience he was forced to kill her to save her soul from eternal damnation.

But in the meanwhile, he is putting on his act on Chowk for all and sundry to admire.

I am not taken in by folks like him and I regularly take a mataporical two-by-four to their heads to beat the hypocrisy out of them.

#27 by harimau:

[I haven`t brought religion into the discussion. I am merely trying to point out the contradictions between this article and your last one lamenting the mainstreaming of Indian Muslims. Notice how you got so many Pakistanis sympathizing with you on that board and how few are even bothering to interact here? Anyway, there was no way you could write both of these articles and not expect me to point out the contradictions even if you had spaced them a year apart. But then, I suppose I could say that woman is a bundle of contradictions and write it off! ;) ]

I have already maintained in my last post that paranormal phenomena have nothing to do with religion. And why are you obsessed about whether Pakistanis interact or not? How many Indians, how many Hindus, are here?

As for contradictions, have you seen the IM poster boy who had been warning ``fellow Indians` to keep away from me, now talking about the same things -- colonialising of minorities and co-opting them on another board? But on another note, I am indeed a bundle -- contradictions are a mere part of it...

[This royalty bit.... do you have any idea if you were a Nawab or Sultan`s wife, part of his harem (couldn`t resist that!) or perhaps even a Rajput queen who burnt herself to death on the funeral pyre of her royal husband who fought the invading Muslims? The last bit would be a riot, don`t you think?]

Ah, in my piece I spoke of being royalty, the gender was not revealed....but of course you must follow the tried-and-tested path, so I have to put up with promiscuous nawabs and sultans or valiant fighting Rajputs...I can`t see myself as a part of a harem, nor can any nawab, for with the female bonding I would bring to bear, he would be left twiddling his thumb. As for leaping into a funeral pyre, I prefer myself rare rather than well-done :)
- - -

#28 by mshergil:

Thanks. It is indeed confusing, but only if we make it so. Besides, one must not get too involved with the idea of reincarnation. Meditating on oneself can reveal so many layers of one`s personality that would make up for several lives.And you are right, yesterday, today, tomorrow are so vastly different...yet everything is a continuum
- - -

The fact the some people mistake a deep spiritual seeking with fortune telling reveals that they cannot tell the difference between the parrot and the stick...;)

Farzana, really enjoyed reading your well written article. There are so many things that we do not know about and ourselves, but thanks to rapid communications, we are slowly learning more about the unknown through each other experiences.

However reincarnation may not be such a simple affair. We are different today, from what we were yesterday, and will be different tommorow. What is the `I` that we talk about which reincarnates. Isnt it nothing but a collection of everchanging thoughts that give you an identity. Which is why when you have the dreamless part of the sleep when the mind is not there (although brain is working), you have no conscious identity or sense of time.

So there is a section of `Hindus` who do not believe in reincarnation, saying that that is a misleading word, and if the thoughts dissolve on death of a person, then his/ her identity also dies. However most Hindus believe that there is an identity that survives with memories and is reborn.

To be honest I find the whole thing very confusing !!!!

Ref FarzanaVersey #21

[Harimau:
........
To answer the first query: I do not feel the need to follow rules and there are several Muslims who do not, and there is no fatwa issued against them. And despite being called a whiner often, I have no intention of Rushdifying myself.]

If there are no fatwas issued it is only because the fatwa-issuers haven`t noticed your straying!

[Why have you brought religion into this discussion? Or is it bothering you that a Muslim is ‘walking your talk’ and breasting the tape quicker?? :) ]

I haven`t brought religion into the discussion. I am merely trying to point out the contradictions between this article and your last one lamenting the mainstreaming of Indian Muslims. Notice how you got so many Pakistanis sympathizing with you on that board and how few are even bothering to interact here? Anyway, there was no way you could write both of these articles and not expect me to point out the contradictions even if you had spaced them a year apart. But then, I suppose I could say that woman is a bundle of contradictions and write it off! ;)

[PS: Guess what? I was not in any of these places in my past birth. So forget the idea of ‘exporting’ me… ]

This royalty bit.... do you have any idea if you were a Nawab or Sultan`s wife, part of his harem (couldn`t resist that!) or perhaps even a Rajput queen who burnt herself to death on the funeral pyre of her royal husband who fought the invading Muslims? The last bit would be a riot, don`t you think?

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Puyu: I meant to say that his posts are typacally in support of hindusim and india because those are the systems he is born into. Such is the mentality of almost everyone on this site. The idiots blindly support the country and religion they were born into.

#22 by DRUMZ


``typical hindu indian ``?

Could you explain please?

DRUMZ:
The past life experience (and there may be several, but to have one potent one is important) does not merely relate to my current situation. It reveals it...eg. had I looked into the future `then`, I might have been able to see me as I am now! You have a point about collective intentions and people influencing each other. Yet, there is a difference. We may identify with an historical figure/guru, but the `character` that is us in our past life/subconscious is a reflection. And I mean reflection not only as a mirror to show us what we are, but to show us what we are not. It is a mystical experience.

How do I know I did not WILL these interpretations to fit into my current situation? I do not know that. In fact, I could have. But that would be a mature mind speaking. As I said earlier, would my child mind be able to have willed something? Or is it only that my `now past` has some resemblance to the `then past`? Would that explain certain obsessions and strong beliefs that just stay with us despite all attempts to prove us wrong? What about details that one is not aware of at all in the current situation, but turn out to be really like one `saw` them? Can out psyche influence these external factors that are not even a part of our present? I am seriously intrigued..which is why I looked at the encyclopaedia and was completely taken by surprise to find the same images during the period I was `regressing`.

[I think i question this all relates to is the nature of the brain and the mind. If the mind is more then the brain (which is what your expeirence and near death studies, out of body studies and remote viewing point to) then is the mindsimply channeling expeirences from the universal consciuousness down to us? As mystics and LSD users testify, are we all not one, all connected?]

I am glad you made the distinction between the mind and the brain... however, I feel that universal consciousness is not uniform. In fact, it is dynamic, which is why down the ages different mystics have found different routes to connect, and LSD users have seen different psychedelic colours of the lights. What may be seen as selfish is in fact the liberating of the self. In that sense we `will` our destinies.

It is good that you added to this discussion and made me ask myself many more questions.

Farzana: Its about time you wrote this. Being certified a coockoo when one is writing on a site frequented by some of the stupidest desis on the planet SHOULD be a compliament.

The CIA often during the cold war resorted to using the tool of remote viewing in hwich the psychic is in a room and will describes the surroundings and locations of a person of interest to the FBI. The technique is still used and taught today.

As for our relationship to the cosmic consciousness, that is a question for Jung. I would have no comment as i have no context in interpreting such a thing as a universal consciousness.

Are you arguing that because those previous experiences in a way relate to your current situation, that they may be your own past life experiences? If so, again i cant speak onthe nature of the consciousness, yet I can throw in that all beings MAY be interrelated. That one thing which affects one person affects another. That possibly our collective intentions affect nature and international politics. These are just theories.

How would you know that you did not WILL your interpretations of these events to fit in your current situation? Most spiritually minded people have the ability to percieve situations through they eyes of numerous people. IM sure you do this yourself. How do you know you werent doing it in your past life experience?

I think i question this all relates to is the nature of the brain and the mind. If the mind is more then the brain (which is what your expeirence and near death studies, out of body studies and remote viewing point to) then is the mindsimply channeling expeirences from the universal consciuousness down to us? As mystics and LSD users testify, are we all not one, all connected?

Harimau: To be blunt here, you are not an individual who is worth debating because your of a lesser mind. The more someone allows for their environment to dictate their lives, the lesser their minds are. Your typical hindu indian posts are laffable at best.

DRUMZ:

[By The way, THAT these sorts of experiences occur does NOT necessarily valid the theory of reincarnation.
We may be able to objectively validate a memory of ANOTHER life as being plausible. That does not necessessarily mean that experience was YOURS in a previous life.
Some mental experiments show that it is pausible for someone to affect not only the present but the past and the future with their intentions. This notion may point to the existence of a ``universal consciousness.`` There may be some sort of cosmic consciousness that we can all tap into, some more then others, to expeirence the wisdom and realities of those whove lived before or after us.]

This is so true…(though I do agree that there are revelations of reincarnation in Sufism). What you call ‘affecting with intentions’, I would refer to as the subconscious projecting. This is a deeper tool than say auto-suggestion where you tell yourself that you can see something.

Re. cosmic consciousness, the question arises as to how much we can influence it? By tapping into it are we merely passive spectators? We all carry baggages – so how many of us are bogged down by genes, by environment, by learning, by rebelling, by thinking, by feeling, by ‘universalising’ what may be peculiar only to us only to legitimise ourselves?

I cannot publicly go into the past life thing here, but my persona/concerns as they have been since childhood were reflected in that whole sequence…now, as a child one has not learned from the wisdom of those who came before us. This is what makes it a bit daunting.

Then there is what may be dismissed as superficial aspects. Why do some of us not fit into our environments, even though we are born and bred there? How do we ‘know’ strangers?

PS: Love you too.
PPS: I have been certified a cuckoo case after this piece…
- - -
Harimau:

[So you can`t have a different Allah floating your boat. You better believe in all of the above or you will have a fatwa on your head from the current fatwa-issuers, no matter that you may have been one in one of your past lives.
Anyway, your responses and this article are proof that you have been ``mainstreamed`` (or, is it that you have ``mainlined`` Hinduism?).
Scrach a subcontinental Muslim and you find a Hindu! Never mind who is floating the boat, I think you are riding an inner tube down the mainstream]

To answer the first query: I do not feel the need to follow rules and there are several Muslims who do not, and there is no fatwa issued against them. And despite being called a whiner often, I have no intention of Rushdifying myself.

What have telepathy, healing, dreams and past-life got to do with Hinduism? The Hindu belief in reincarnation is stratified, based on the Karmic theory. What I am talking about is essentially an individual search for the lost self – this is not based on being indoctrinated into a religion, but being aware of spirituality. Rituals and scriptures may give some people a direction but the ‘rooh’ and ‘atma’ are above these.

Why have you brought religion into this discussion? Or is it bothering you that a Muslim is ‘walking your talk’ and breasting the tape quicker?? :)

You really don’t have to scratch a subcontinental Muslim…they are quite adept at scratching themselves (go to Peshawar, Kabul, Chandni Chowk, Bhendi Bazaar)! And post-scratching, you won’t find a Hindu but just a very itchy person…

PS: Guess what? I was not in any of these places in my past birth. So forget the idea of ‘exporting’ me…

I was driving yesterday through a crowded street. For some reason I began to think of an old colleague...his name just flashed through my mind…rather his initials, for that is how everyone addresses him. The traffic was moving slowly and as I crossed about one block I saw a board on a shop with the initials of the same person…it was a new store, never seen it before and this is my regular route…is the mind so powerful?

A few people do not believe I should be writing stuff like this because it is not rational. But life is not made-to-order. Why did I go for that course? As I said there was cynicism not so much because of what it entailed but I feel these things have to be tapped from within us. I was already ‘aware’ of these aspects within me. And while past life regression is fascinating, I did not even know this was part of the course. This was revealed during the last session. So, this should not be the reason for getting into self-hypnosis. Interestingly, I do not use the meditation technique at all, but I still can ‘see’ as I did before. One has to be in it already…that is the reason not everyone got anywhere with it…

We had one test on telepathy… all we had to do was meditate and see what picture came to mind and to see whether around the same time that ‘picture’ really took place. In my case the whole episode had happened at exactly the same time as I was meditating…I checked it with my mother who was in that picture…about a letter, a call received, the nature of that conversation and what she was wearing. Some things are just not easy to explain and I leave them be. I desist from placing too much emphasis on my intuition in daily life, even if by not listening to it I have suffered even more in my attempt at rationalising and logical thinking:)

Sucheta:

Hi…this was done a while ago and the person is in Kolkata. I do not have the info ready, but shall look it up and mail it to you once I trace it…I did not even save any address or telephone number. Just one suggestion: do not look specifically for past-life regression.

Dost-mittarji:

[I found the whole episode weird, fascinating and intriguing. I have often wondered, those of us who have difficulty believing in the concept of God, how do we react to such revelations (stigmatas also comes to mind) while keeping our ``unfaith`` intact? Does one have to believe in God to believe in the supernatural; is there more to us than the matter we are made of?]

Very pertinent questions. I would say that god exists as vagueness (the omnipotent, omniscient aspect making it all the more obscure); god does not give us a history to fall back on. The supernatural depends to a great degree on the subconscious – we project what is within and in turn often what is deep inside us are entrenched cobwebs from who knows where…but there is a familiarity that is one’s own.

There is certainly more to us than we are made of, but it should not become obsessive.

Incidentally, this has to do with you. A while ago you had disappeared from Chowk. I was trying to sign in my email account to compose a note to you asking if all was well and while waiting for it, I opened the Chowk site and I saw you there! Co-incidence? Maybe…but this has happened often and even with people I do not expect to see…the other day I was going through a text file of an old Jinnah piece, just then there was a SMS from someone who I barely know and who I rarely communicate with…I went back to Jinnah and as I was scrolling through the piece, at the end there was a letter (the only one I have written to him) addressed to the gentleman who had sent the SMS! (I must have typed the note some months ago on this file before mailing it…)

Nazarsaab:

You have touched upon quite a few elements…

1.The feeling of knowing a new place is not uncommon…sometimes it could be that it is like something we have indeed seen before in this life itself! However, there are times when the sense of familiarity with the place can displace you…there are so many layers within us…
2.You talked of out of body experience when you were ill. Now here it could be delirium too. Or it could be more…
3.Dreams: I place tremendous faith in what dreams reveal. They are the true windows to our subconscious. The incidents you related are obvious and hence easy to trace, but often dreams are like mazes and discovering their meanings absolutely fascinating. (I dislike those books that tell you what a snake or a crow mean…they do not take a holistic approach.)

You say, “So superstition has some basis - after all, the faiths are advanced form of superstition. The holy scriptures from the Divine are believed by so many.” While I agree with this, I do not believe that paranormal happenings are superstition. If I do not cross the road when I see a black cat, then that is superstition, but if I know that a black cat will be crossing that road at a particular time we are talking about something else here…

Incidentally, the ‘healing’ that I wrote about can be frightening. I have dismissed it in a couple of sentences, but it took a few days for me to snap out of it.

Ref FarzanaVersey #5

[``stern-faced Allah``? Not the one that floats my boat and has no specific name or gender.]

You may want to watch out. On another board, MaudidiLives wrote:

[Her is a list of beliefs by three catagories. One has to have belief in every one of them to be considered a Muslim:

CORE BELIEFS

a. Iman-e-Mujammil

I believe in Allah with all His attributes as described by His names; I accept all of His orders and testify that they are true.

b. Iman-e-Muffassal

``I believe in Allah, in His Angels, His Scriptures, His Prophets, the Day of Judgement, and in the fact that every thing good or bad (in the world) is pre-destined by Allah the Exalted, and in the resurrection after death.``

DERIVATIVE BELIEFS

Derivative Beliefs i.e. the beliefs that follow the core set of beliefs but they are also specifically mentioned in Qura`n

1. Allah the Most Exalted is One.
2. None is worthy of worship and devotion except Allah.
3. There is no partner of Allah.
4. He Knows everything; nothing is hidden from Him
5. He is All Powerful and Mighty.
6. It is He who created the earth, the sky, the moon, the sun, the stars, the angels, human beings, genies and the entire universe.
7. He gives life and death. In other words, life and death of all creatures take place by His command.
8. He feeds all His creation.
9 He does not eat, drink, or sleep.
10. He is Self-existent from eternity and will last till eternity.
11. No one has created Him.
12. He has no father, no son, no daughter, no wife, or other relations. He is above all such relationships.
13. All depend on Him. He does not depend on anyone, and He has no needs.
14. He is Peerless. There is nothing like Him. Nothing resembles Him.
15. He is free from all imperfections.
16. Unlike His creatures, He does not have hands, legs, nose, ears, face and shape.
17. After creating the angels He has appointed them to carry out specific tasks, and to manage the affairs of the universe.
18. He sent messengers for the guidance of His creatures; to teach people how to follow the true religion, do good deeds, and forbid them from the evil things. Prophet Mohammad is the most exalted of all those messengers and LAST IN THE LINE OF PROPHETHOOD.]

So you can`t have a different Allah floating your boat. You better believe in all of the above or you will have a fatwa on your head from the current fatwa-issuers, no matter that you may have been one in one of your past lives.

Anyway, your responses and this article are proof that you have been ``mainstreamed`` (or, is it that you have ``mainlined`` Hinduism?).

Scrach a subcontinental Muslim and you find a Hindu! Never mind who is floating the boat, I think you are riding an inner tube down the mainstream ;)

Ref EARDRUMZ with a hole #14

[Of course do not expect to win over the vast majority of simple minded idiots on this site like kaurasach and the increasingly stupid harimou.]

What happened? Your abbaji told you he was a bhangi and you were thinking all along you were descended from Bahadur Shah?

By The way, THAT these sorts of experiences occur does NOT necessarily valid the theory of reincarnation.

We may be able to objectively validate a memory of ANOTHER life as being plausible. That does not necessessarily mean that experience was YOURS in a previous life.

Some mental experiments show that it is pausible for someone to affect not only the present but the past and the future with their intentions. This notion may point to the existence of a ``universal consciousness.`` There may be some sort of cosmic consciousness that we can all tap into, some more then others, to expeirence the wisdom and realities of those whove lived before or after us.