Aryavarta

Not just in the present-BJP government, but even their predecessors from the UPA demonstrated a noticeable lack of clarity in their Foreign Policy especially with regards to the major Blocs of Power in the world, the Western (NATO) and the Eastern (Russia, primarily). Even before writing about the reasons for our confusion, I would like to observe a simple fact that even after the Cold War was “finished” by the liberalisation of the Communist economies, animosity and power struggle between the two Blocs has remained alive. This has become even more pronounced since Russia’s influence again rises in its neighbourhood and beyond, with most recent examples of its more dominating posture demonstrated by the recent conflagration in Crimea and the ongoing struggle in Syria. It's not hard to discern why Indian Foreign Policy strategists are appearing confused in this status-quo, because even after the Cold War was supposedly finished, and of course, we too bent the knee by adopting

A remarkable capability of the human mind is the ability to reduce the entire world to a single thought and the entirety of time to a single moment. And this seems to be something that reflects in the lives and work of some of the most successful people in our world, how their ideas or creations aim towards the entire world, for all time, something that probably needs to exist in their minds in a way that it can process them.    Think about the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate and humanist. Or of the actions of someone like Mahatma Gandhi. A notable facet of their humanism is that their minds processed the facts of their time altogether into sets of singularities,  as is evident in Tagore's spiritual guidance to humanity (speaking about the spiritual condition of all humanity) and Gandhi's prognosis of what was wrong with India in the 20th century (speaking about facts that affected the entire sub-continent). Through the thoughts that they entertained

Me and my friend Dennis were great dreamers nearing the end of our school lives. We spent many afternoons in Saket thinking about the future of our country and our own futures, about doing something for all the problems facing our country and the world today. After many years of college education, I met him again this month, ... and we had a opportunity to look back over our dreams and re-evaluate our purpose. I asked him a question that plagues all our minds as a society, "Hey, Dennis, after nearly five years of college education, do you think we have lost our way? Do you think we will actually be able to live out our dreams that we used to speak about so passionately? It just feels that after five years of college education my present and future are in great darkness, I feel like we have lost our way, I don't know if we are in a position to live great lives anymore. It seems so hopeless."  The question sparked a discussion in us that tore away all the other concer

It's a bit of a cosmic joke that to "awaken to their true self" people don't have to change at all, they don't have to change their lifestyles or their spiritual practice, or their habits or any other doings, or what they read or how they worship. But they always ask about exactly these things, about how they have to change, how they have to improve, what they have to do, and which God they have to worship. Spiritual teachers are also no help to us here; their whole enterprise being about helping people who come to them asking for advice; prescribing mantras, kriyas, yogas to attain something, to achieve something, to become something.  And this paradox that the spoken word is not able to traverse is created precisely because there is no possible way to quantify or communicate the immensity of the experience of god-consciousness. It is like telling someone about what drowning or dying  feels like, one can only attempt to point towards the experience but cann