THE EFFECTS OF SOFT MUSIC AT TAJ MAHAL

Over all this richness and beauty rises a magnificent dome, which is so constructed as to contain an echo more pure, more prolonged, and harmonious than any other in the world, so far known. A competent judge has declared, ‘Of all the complicated music ever heard bon earth, that of the flute played gently in the vault below, where the remains of the Emperor and his consort repose, as the sound rises to the dome amid a hundred arched alcoves around, and descends in heavenly reverberations upon those who sit or recline on the cenotaphs above, is perhaps the finest to an inartificial ear. We feel as if it were from heaven; and breathed by angels. It is to the ear what the building is to the eye; but unhappily it cannot, like the building, live in our recollections. All that we can in afterlife remember is, that it was heavenly and produced heavenly emotions.’ An enthusiast thus more glowingly describes it: ‘Now take your seat upon the marble pavement beside the upper tombs, and send your companion to the vault underneath to run slowly over the notes of his flute or guitar. Was ever a melody like this? It haunts the air above and around. It distills in showers upon the polished marble. It condenses into the mild shadows, and sublimes into the softened, hallowed light of the dome. It rises, it falls; it swims mockingly, meltingly around. It is the very element with which dreams are builded. It is the melancholy echo of the past – it is the bright, delicate harping of the future. It is the atmosphere breathed by Areil, and playing around the fountain of Chindara. It is the spirit of the Taj, the voice of inspired love, which called into being this peerless wonder of the world, and elaborated its symmetry and composed its harmony, and, eddying around its young minarets and domes blended with them without a line into the azure of immensity.’

• William Butler, 1873. The Land of The Veda, 5th edition, pp. 139-40. Nelson & Phillips, NY

Diverse Journeys has included Taj Mahal tours as part of the offered Spiritual Journeys in North India during 2011: “In the Steps of The Buddha”, and “Gods & Gompas: Exploring Ladakh and Kashmir”. It would be unforgivable not to include this amazing and touching testimony to love from the height of the Moghul Empire of India. To find out more, please kindly go to the TOURS page and scroll down till you come to North India. For costs and other information, please contact Dr Meath Conlan: meath@diversejourneys.com

CREATING A BLOG-SITE CAN BE FUN – FOR YOURSELF OR OTHERS!

Ann Nash

I have to say that the sudden onset of this technical and design learning that my friend Dandapani has involved me in, is proving a consuming delight! To have been propelled from typewriter / magic tape / white-out / scissors and glue – to my first Apple lap top in 1995, and now, in 2010 to have been elevated into the ethereal realms of Blogging under my own steam, and as a consequence now having virtually an alternative website is simply too amazing! Thanks Dandapani <www.vedicodyssey.com>

Not only has it benefitted by helping grow my little business of spiritual direction, and small-group spiritual journeys to India, Nepal, Bali and so on, but I have just recently been able to help my sister Ann and her husband Barry Nash. They’re putting their Mandurah (south of Perth on the Indian ocean) home on the market, so I said I’d create a blog-site for them. And voila! The miracle happened! Larger-than-Life!

Ann and husband Barry Nash, with my niece Jules Adam

I use Word Press, it’s free, and it’s so easy that it happened almost without me touching the wheel! If you don’t believe me, go and see what I did for yourselves. I’m sure you’ll not only be impressed, but may even want to get cracking and create your own little blog-site yourself. I hope you do and I wish you well. So go off now and visit my sister’s Blog and see the colours and layout. Believe me it’s easier than you think! Then – do your own!

Oh! And if any of you are down south of Perth for The Mandurah Crab Festival, I’ll be there: you might like to drop in to 2 Priam Road, Silver Sands. It’s just off Ormsby Terrace. Please do!

http://2priamroad.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/mandurah-western-australia/

Saint Basil The Great’s Description of the Ideal Place for a Monastic Hermitage

Monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, France

Basil (330 – 379 AD), Bishop of Caesarea in Asia Minor, gladly withdrew into the wilderness. But before he went, he wrote to Gregory Nazianzen to try to persuade him to join him. His idyllic description of the place he had settled on says much of his character and his sensitivity to places. This was not just any beautiful spot, after all, but one closely connected with his family.

Basil’s Letter 14. To his Friend, Gregory of Nazianzen.

Basil: Gregory wrote that he had been meaning to visit me for a long time, and he added that you also wished to come. But I have been disappointed so often that I find this hard to believe. I think it would be silly for me to wait here counting on your coming. In any case, I have to go. … I went to the Pontus to look for a place to live, and there, finally, God showed me a spot. …

Picture a high mountain. It is heavily wooded and on the northern side has many cold, clear streams. At the base of this mountain is a sloping meadow, made green by the water from above. Around the meadow trees of every kind and colour form a natural forest, almost a wall encircling it. Homer admired the beauty of Calypso’s island more than any other; but beside this spot that is nothing at all. As a matter of fact, it is practically an island for it is defended in all directions. There are deep ravines cutting it off on two sides and the river, on a third, drops from the overhanging cliff to provide a completely impassable barrier. With the mountain itself on the fourth side … the approaches … are walled off. There is only one way to get there, and that I control.

Beside my house there is a sort of narrow neck of land with a high ridge at the end of it. Below it the meadow lies before one’s eyes. And from there you can see the river. … Flowing faster than any other I have ever seen, the river suddenly plunges over the edge of the rock, then rushes around in a deep pool. Not only is it a beautiful sight, as all who see it agree, but innumerable fish also breed there and provide in plenty for the needs of all who live in the area.

I need not mention the delightful odours of the land or the breeze on the river. As for the flowers or the songbirds – and there are plenty of both – let someone else speak of them. I have other things on my mind. I can say nothing greater about this spot than that, besides producing because of its remarkable location all sorts of fruits, it also provides what is to me the most delicious fruit of all: solitude. …

So now you can see what an idiot I was even to think of exchanging this place for Tiberina, the mud hole of the world. You will pardon me if I hurry to get there.

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If you or your friends would like to receive my periodical newsletter, which contains articles of human interest and spirituality, as well as information about forthcoming seminars and retreats, and journeys to India, Nepal, and Bali then please kindly send word to me: meath@diversejourneys.com

Joe’s Experience of Wonder and Awe

My friend Joe (29) was employed as an earth-scientist for a Multi-National mining company in a country on the Equator. What follows is part of our remarkable exchange with poetic insights relating to his experience of the spirituality of his occupation in that often difficult and challenging setting among people of another culture, far away from home and familiar surroundings.

JOE: So when I started to talk to them, just as I would my friends … and admittedly, I guess, my friends aren’t stalwarts of society, they’re not Justices of The Peace you know! A lot of them do drugs, or are on the shadowy edge of society … Anyway, I would sit down (with the local people) and talk about them as my friends – and what they were up to … Hey! Suddenly I was overwhelmed with stories! … Everyone had to talk to me, and had to touch me! (punching the air to emphasise) It was wonderful! (Pause)

They were just like my friends here at home. They lived a very different life out there. But they’re the same sort of people … So I naturally immediately got along with them, and they couldn’t get over that. In fact a couple of them used to describe: that I “had the Soul of a black man…”. Which was a great compliment for me, because these black men had much stronger ties to their family and friends. Their relationships were absolute! To be the friend of a native there, would mean they would be closely ‘by your side,’ no matter what happened! To the death, in extreme circumstances! If there’s a friend that could hold your hand across the chasm of death, it would, in my experience out there, be a native man!

MEATH: Do you wish to describe more of your feelings about this?

JOE: Another one of those ‘very hard to express’ things. But, it’s difficult to put into words. You’ve got to have silence to repeat the experience, to revisit it and say, “Oh! Yeah. That’s how it felt.” I’ve tried to put down and isolate the individual emotions that I felt. (Pause)

MEATH: You were talking about ‘silence’ as a tool for ‘going back.’

JOE: Yeah. Well, silence made it easy for doing that. It’s not like it was a conscious effort to go back either. It was something … that’s happened. It was ‘an unfolding.’ Yeah. It was ‘an unfolding’ of something that was ‘knotted up’ very tightly inside me … Suddenly a leaf would drop off and float down that stream that I near. (voice softens, hands and fingers seem to be orchestrating silent music, or painting an invisible picture) And then another leaf, and then another one … They were unfolding, and the longer I stayed there, the deeper, the more unfolded it became. And, ah! It was very energising, and, as I said, ‘cleansing.’ Pretty spiritual really!

‘Cleansing’ is the only word I can use to describe it, because when you compared how you felt to how you normally felt; how you felt in the silence, and how you felt in your day to day life, et cetera and so forth… it’s like, all those thoughts were less than where you wanted to be in relation to your inner self. … Things that were cluttering you up and bothering you … in the silence… well, they just went away. They were all gone. There were no thoughts.

There were no thoughts any more. So, sit there and say, “I was thinking it was like this, or …” No! I wasn’t thinking anything! I was feeling (leans forward with emphasis) everything. Absolutely in the moment. But I wasn’t thinking about, or thinking, “Oh! Isn’t this so wonderful.” No! I was thinking absolutely nothing.

Feeling the forest! Looking at the leaf and feeling it. Looking at the flower (gesturing tiny-ness with his fingers, squinting his eyes) and feeling it. Looking at the tiny fern that was growing next to you and feeling it. And ah, my field assistant was doing that too. That was the beautiful thing of it. I’m walking along and he’d get his bush knife and show me something, you know. “Look at this! Watch this one!” You know. And I’d just be looking, and I’d utter, “Oh! Wow!” I wouldn’t say anything, and I’d put it down again, and off I’d go again. Walking. Silence.

To be able to do that was like… I was getting so much out of those moments. Each of those moments was like a lifetime. You know … the experience of the dew-drop underneath the little piece of moss growing in a tiny bit of sunlight that was breaking through the canopy. This was a life-time’s experience; just looking at it. And (voice softening; careful enunciation of each word capturing the memory) feeling the cold of the water in the stream and listening to its sound as it ran across the rocks. Really beautiful.  It’s the essence of what people say is spiritual, I think.

A lot of people say, “Well, yeah, that’s the forest and it’s beautiful, and it’s this and that,” and they use all these words to describe it.

But that was the spiritual experience of being able to live in each moment. And have your senses so open in each moment, that they could just suck in  e-v-e-r-y-thing about that moment. The touch, and feeling, and smell, and texture. And the way the air felt as it came down into the lungs. And just  t-o-t-a-l-l-y  taking that in, and thinking about nothing else at that moment. That was … That was the silence. Very sacred.

Whereas at the start, when you first started to experience it … (Pause) Imagine a butterfly’s wing beating on your ear drums! (demonstrates boom, boom, boom …) That’s what it felt like. Almost like noise, but not noise. There’s nothing there. There’s a numb-ness and a mute-ness. So you thought: if someone started to talk … if you started talking, you wouldn’t even hear the words coming out of your mouth, they would just be dissipated   into the air, before they would even … Ah! The crack of the tree falling in the forest – you would hear it! Because there would be silence. It was all quite touching. A deep touching. In the deepest part of my self, my spiritual self.

If you or your friends would like to receive my periodical newsletter, which contains articles of human interest and spirituality, as well as information about forthcoming seminars and retreats, and journeys to India, Nepal, and Bali then please kindly send word to me: meath@diversejourneys.com