heavenly bodies…

You get a sense here, as you drive around Delhi, that there is a struggle taking place. Its a big tussle between the forces that are pushing this nation towards “progress” and “technology” and those that are pulling it back towards its roots, its spirituality, its Self.

Today I got the chance to visit Jantar Mantar, a three hundred year old Vedic observatory set in the midst of Delhi near where the Parliament now sits. It was an immediate contrast for me because while you went to view the huge instruments you could not help but notice how some of them, which once pointed to the sky, now pointed at a building or two. These instruments that were designed to keep precise watch over the cosmos and stand as testament to the depth of knowledge that was part of Vedic culture, stand here as relics of a time gone by.

They sit in the middle of the city with honking cars speeding by, as a monument to the past without most passers-by even acknowledging or hinting at the greatness in their design. While one can feel some degree of satisfaction in knowing that the observatory is being maintained and cared for, anyone who knows the tremendous value and significance that these instruments have not just in measuring our planet and other heavenly bodies moving around in the cosmos, but also their value in realigning our own physiology, our own bodies with the cosmos… cannot but be disheartened by the ignorance of this great work’s true benefits for society.

It stands as testament to India’s near-sightedness that they honor their past yet not enough to comprehend that the understanding of life that they are running towards is infinitely less fulfilling, enriching, civilized or evolved than the deep knowledge they are running from.

Yet this struggle is in stark contrast to the one we are having in the West… which is growing more and more weary of its undirected development and its unfolding list of unintended side-effects, and reaching more fervently towards ancient wholistic knowledge and understanding of life.

In Europe and the U.S. the struggle is more subtle on a level where it is hardly noticed. Yet there is rarely a gym in the Western world that does not offer yoga classes. There is a long line of movie stars, athletes and even politicians who are ever more appreciative of ancient traditions. Eastern words and concepts like Karma, Pundit, Mantra and many more are becoming a part of our lexicon as though it had always been so… though often failing to acknowledge the origin of such expressions.

It is another effect from our shrinking world. You have hundreds of millions of Indians wielding cell-phones while the least spiritual of your friends in Europe or America is raving about their new yoga class.

And it makes me wonder… can we have it both ways? can we straddle the fence like this and get the full benefit of both?

I for one have been trying to… I am, after all,  the accidental monk traveling in India blogging online about my experiences…

Maharishi always talked about 200% of life, 100% relative and 100% absolute, and he delighted in the benefits of technology when it made it possible to expand the avenues through which knowledge could be shared. He expounded on the Vedas and Vedic literature countless times in front of video cameras and tape-recorders leveraging the timelessness of his message on the most advanced technologies.

Though it must be pointed out that he also cautioned us on the dangers of unbridled technological advancement. As science developed more and more complex games with finer and finer levels of creation he grew more and more cautious and sounded the alarms warning of the unforeseen perils of playing with the fabrics of creation despite such a finite amount of understanding and experience of it.

While he praised the advancements of the Internet and electric vehicles, he warned against bio-engineered food, increasingly encouraged organic and local foods and advocated the limited use of cell-phones and wi-fi networks…

Yet it has always seemed difficult to walk the fine line in knowing how quickly to adapt promising technologies and how much to pull from our ancient knowledge. And it is harder and harder without a guiding light and leadership to help us in keeping perspective and finding that life-supporting balance.

As I stood there in awe, looking at the amazing instruments, I wondered how it is that these two apparently opposing values can come together and help us to realize that we can have all the outer pleasures without sacrificing our inner glory. How is it that we may come to understand that these instruments were made not just for the purpose of studying the cosmic bodies, a task which modern technology may have surpassed, but also for aligning ourselves with our cosmic counterparts, a task which modern science fails to even conceive of.

It seems as thought that is going to be one of our main tasks in this coming century… that we may bridge this gap so that we may know ourselves to be nothing less than the full glory of what we are… Heavenly bodies in the midst of heavenly bodies…