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Scientists who worked on the Archimedes Palimpsest are using modern imaging technologies to digitally restore a 700-year-old Vaishnava palm-leaf manuscript. The project, led by P.R. Mukund and Roger L. Easton Jr., professors at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, will digitally preserve the original writings known as the Sarvamoola-granthas, attributed to the scholarly preceptor Sripada Madhvacharya (1238-1317). The collection of 36 works contains his Sanskrit commentaries on sacred scriptures and conveys an exposition of his philosophical system (popularly known as Dvaita Vedanta, to emphasize its departure from Sripada Sankaracharya’s earlier system of Advaita Vedanta).

The document is difficult to handle and to read, the result of centuries of inappropriate storage techniques, botched preservation efforts and degradation due to improper handling. Each leaf of the manuscript measures 26 inches long and two inches wide (66cm X 5cm), and is bound together with braided cord threaded through two holes. Heavy wooden covers sandwich the 340 palm leaves, cracked and chipped at the edges. Time and a misguided application of oil have aged the palm leaves dark brown, obscuring the Sanskrit writings.

It is literally crumbling to dust, says Mukund, the Gleason Professor of Electrical Engineering at RIT. According to Mukund, 15 percent of the manuscript is missing. The book will never be opened again, unless there is a compelling reason to do so, Mukund says, because every time they do, they lose some. After this, there won’t be a need to open the book.

Mukund first became involved with the project when his spiritual teacher in India brought the problem to his attention and urged him to find a solution. This became a personal goal for Mukund, who studies and teaches sanatan-dharma and understood the importance of preserving the document for future scholars. The accuracy of existing printed copies of the Sarvamoola-granthas is unknown.

Mukund sought the expertise of RIT colleague Easton, who had imaged the Dead Sea Scrolls and is currently working on the Archimedes Palimpsest. Easton, a professor at RIT Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, brought in Keith Knox, an imaging senior scientist at Boeing LTS, as a consultant. Mukund added Ajay Pasupuleti, a doctoral candidate in microsystems at RIT, and the team was formed.

The scientists traveled to India in December 2005 to assess the document stored at a monastery-like matha in Udupi, India. Sponsored by a grant from RIT, the team returned to the monastery in June and spent six days imaging the document using a scientific digital camera and an infrared filter to enhance the contrast between the ink and the palm leaf. Images of each palm leaf, back and front, were captured in eight to ten sections, then processed and digitally stitched together.

“The imaging is fairly straightforward,” said Easton. The leaves, or what remained of them, were laid out on a movable tabletop. Like an assembly line worker, Pasupuleti spent hours a day advancing the tabletop a short distance, taking a picture and then repeating the process. Each image covered a two-inch (5cm X 5cm) square of leaf. The summer was spent digitally stitching the 7,900 images together - work overseen in large part by Knox, using various image-processing algorithms using Adobe Photoshop and Knox’s custom software.

This is a very significant application of the same types of tools that we have used on the Archimedes Palimpsest, Easton says. Not incidentally, this also has been one of the most enjoyable projects in my career, since the results will be of great interest to a large number of people in India.

The processed images of the Sarvamoola-granthas will be stored in a variety of media formats, including electronically, in published books and on silicon wafers for long-term preservation. Etching the sacred writings on silicon wafers was the idea of Mukund’s student Pasupuleti. The process, called aluminum metallization, transfers an image to a wafer by creating a negative of the image and depositing metal on the silicon surface. According to Pasupuleti, each wafer can hold the image of three leaves. More than a hundred such wafers will be needed to store the entire manuscript. As an archival material, silicon wafers are both fireproof and waterproof, and are readable with the use of a magnifying glass.

Mukund and Pasupuleti will return to India at the end of November to give printed and electronic versions of the Sarvamoola-granthas to the monastery in Udupi in a public ceremony in Bangalore, the largest city in the Karnataka region. We feel we were blessed to have this opportunity to do this, Mukund says. It was a fantastic and profoundly spiritual experience, and we all came away cleansed.

Based on the success of this project, Mukund is seeking funding to image other Dvaita-sampradaya Vaishnava manuscripts in the Udupi region written since the time of Sripada Madhvacharya. He estimates the existence of approximately 800 palm leaf manuscripts, some of which are in private collections.

CAPTION:

Each palm leaf of the sacred manuscript, the Sarvamoola-granthas, was captured in multiple sections, processed and digitally stitched together. The somewhat blurred image shows the condition of an original leaf from the text, stitched together but unprocessed. The sharper image shows a stitched and processed page after applying modern imaging technologies. Images were taken by Roger Easton, from Rochester Institute of Technology, and Keith Knox, from Boeing LTS, using a Sensys scientific digital camera and an infrared filter.

Chakra.org is a Vaisnava website designed to encourage the growth of devotion, foster critical thinking, and promote communication among Vaisnavas world-wide. Although differences of opinion will occur, we aim to provide a forum for mutual respect among the multiple strands of our community.

Recently, after hearing during a recent class from the LA Temple, that one shouldn’t think he could bring Krsna Consciousness to the work place and expect people there not to influence the devotee, it got me thinking so I am writing this today. I understand the speakers’ intention was to not fool oneself into thinking one can expect oneself to remain strong in one’s sadhana while associating with people outside the temple. For those who feel strongly in this regard, your point can not truly be disputed. As devotees we all know there’s no place like Vaikuntha here on earth, in other words, the temple. We would all love to be in the most fortunate of circumstances, yet for some of us that can not always be possible.

However, there are those who bring the glorious mercy of the Lord everyday to work. I happen to be one of those fortunate few. Below are just a few of the ways I stay Krsna Conscious at work.

Firstly, I am not ashamed to let people know I am a devotee. I sort of revel in the uniqueness and take every opportunity to introduce in private, as much philosophy as I feel is appropriate for the person and/or particular situation. For me it is never easy working in the first place, so generally I make a friend or two for support. I try to pick work associates carefully and select only those who are pious and kind-hearted as a base for any work friendship. They get the most mercy in forms of enlightening discussions and stories, books, chanting, kirtan, prasadam, offered flowers and holy water. They know why I don’t eat meat and even understand how I can’t kill the ants that may crawl on my desk from time to time. They know we can’t go to lunch on Ekadasi and that on some days I fast.

Secondly, I know since most people ensnared in the material existence are almost madmen, for them my compassion is never far away. As a devotee I understand that “there by the grace of God do go I”. My job as a receiver of knowledge is to become the deliverer of such. When able to do so, I’ve noticed that in almost every conversation there is some way to bring in mention of our philosophy. I see that it is my duty to give them the Holy Name somehow or another. If someone is especially kind to me on the phone I almost always end with a softly spoken “Hari Bol” or “Hare Krsna”. I have yet to have anyone ask what I am saying. Maybe they are thinking I am saying, “I have to go”. It’s a great trick and always feel so good after sneaking it in at the end. Sometimes, they may even thank me or give me a “ditto” as I give them credit.

Thirdly, as a devotee I can’t be without my Lord. My desktop background/screen saver is a beautiful array of my favorite Krsna pictures. Krsna pictures and quotes are interspersed amongst the calendars and plants. My ear pod is connected to my computer’s media player and I hear kirtans and lectures as much as possible while I am working. My car has Krsna music playing that others can hear while we drive, as well as my japa beads for chanting are out in the open.

As a devotee let us not forget that we are able to dovetail anything, as we find appropriate, in the service of the Lord. In closing, I thank you for reading my story and hope it may be of help to others and to any who “work outside the temple”.

I know I am not alone and have heard other similar stories such as mine. You may try some of these methods yourself and be pleasantly surprised. I have the best time “treating” conditioned souls to KC.

In closing, I must say I love my job because my days are blissful and although I am working in what appears to be the material realm, I am still in my Spiritual Master’s and beloved Lord’s presence always.

Chakra.org is a Vaisnava website designed to encourage the growth of devotion, foster critical thinking, and promote communication among Vaisnavas world-wide. Although differences of opinion will occur, we aim to provide a forum for mutual respect among the multiple strands of our community.

Five thousand years ago Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, spoke the Bhagavad-gita (the Song of God) which contains information about God, the living entities, karma (action and reaction in this world), time, and the material energy.

The Bhagavad-gita is one of the Vedic literatures. The word veda (from which the word Vedic comes) means knowledge. The Vedic literatures deal with spiritual and material subject matters. The knowledge they contain is perfect, because of its perfect source. God, or God’s devotees in disciplic succession from God.

The Bhagavad-gita teaches us that the soul is unbreakable, unchangeable, insoluble, everlasting, immovable, and neither burnt nor dried. l The Vedic literatures inform us that there are many eternal souls of whom the chief is Krishna, who is maintaining all of the other souls. The Bhagavad-gita explains that the body, which we (who are souls) identify ourselves with in the material world, is simply a machine. It is, of course, a very complex, wonderful machine. Nonetheless, it is still a machine.

In the way that one drives a car, the soul is driving the body. Unfortunately the soul thinks that it is the body, so the characteristics that pertain to a particular body are thought by the soul to be its characteristics. For example: if the body is white, has a gigantic nose, is female, and is born in the United States; the soul thinks that it is an American white woman that needs a nose job.

Because of the soul’s identification with the characteristics of the body, he (the soul) identifies others according to their machine, body characteristics, and forms alliances and animosities accordingly. Thus he develops family attachment, racism, nationalism and even specism; which are all manifestations of the same disease misidentification of the self with the body). When the soul becomes Krishna conscious he no longer distinguishes between living entities because of the differences in the bodily encagement; therefore he sees the true equality of all beings.

The soul is situated along with God (the Supersoul) in the heart of this machine. The soul is driving this machine according to his desires. The Supersoul is observing the soul’s actions, and waiting patiently for the soul to become frustrated in its attempts to enjoy through manipulating the machine body.

When the soul decides that its attempts at enjoyment have been futile and that all future endeavors will miserably fail, he may decide to seek out God. At this point Krishna sends His representative in the form of the spiritual master to guide the soul on its spiritual path. The soul, being covered by the material energy, is not capable of perceiving the existence and direction of the Supersoul who is situated next to him in the heart. Therefore the Supersoul directs His external representative (the spiritual master) to help the sincere searcher.

The Vedas call the present age the “Age of Kali” the age of quarrel. This age began approximately 5,000 years ago. In this age people are less for tunate, less intelligent, shorter lived, have shorter memories, and have weaker bodies. Good qualities such as sympathy for other seducation, truthfulness, cleanliness, forgiveness, and mercyare quickly disappearing. Society is beset withcheating, diplomacy, and violence. The so called leaders of society are encouraging intoxication, illicit sex, gambling, and meat eating, which are considered the principles of irreligiousity.

There is one good quality in this age. That is, simply by chanting the Lord’s names, one can escape the miseries of this age, and go back to the kingdom of God at the end of life. Krishna incarnates in every age to preach the religious practice that is applicable for that particular age. In other ages Krishna taught meditational yoga, or temple worship, or sacrifice.

Krishna appeared about 500 years ago as Lord Caitanya. This advent was predicted in the Vedic literatures more than 5,000 years ago. Lord Caitanya taught the religious practice recommended for this age, Sankirtana, the congregational chanting of the Lord’s names: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

Devotees of the Krishna consciousness movement engage in the chanting of the Lord’s names in public, distributing transcendental literatures (which encourage others to chant), and performing personal meditation on the Lord’s names (called Japa).

For more wisdom, visit http://www.bkgoswami.com and click on Books.

If thoughts are things, then those who are familiar with the Law of Attraction should be living the life of their dreams.

While a few may attain this enviable state, the majority do not rise to that level.

Is it the Law of Attraction that is at fault or the person who uses it? Does it work for some and not for others? Does it work some of the time and not at other times?

It is my contention, both from my study of it and from my many years of experience with it, that the Law of Attraction is as reliable as the Law of Gravity; if applied correctly, it works with unfailing exactitude. I also hold that anybody who studies it and applies it will come to the same conclusion.

“Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened unto you.”

Those are the truest words ever spoken. They not only come from an expert source, who repeatedly demonstrated it, but they can also be proved through your own experience. These are not idle words, philosophical opinions, or rhetorical exhortations; they are words that stand up to the test of observation and experience.

There is no need to rely on authority, even if it happens to be the highest known to the human race. Experiment will definitely prove its value.

The problem of insufficiency then has to do with the practitioner.

Everything that you desire can be yours with the Law of Attraction. If most people appear not to be living in abundance it is due to either not knowing about it or dismissing it as a serious idea.

If this is the great secret of life, now openly revealed by many teachers, why is success with it not apparent everywhere?

Assuming that you know about the Law of Attraction, what is preventing you from living the full expression of it?

In reflecting on this subject, I have isolated three possible factors:

1. Improper application.

Ask for something, then let it go with the full expectation that it will show up. That is the entire principle right there. However, when you fail to ask properly, being vague in your asking, or if you fail to let go, clinging to the idea, then you have not fully exercised the law.

Another way of improperly asking is to merely ask using words devoid of positive, expectant feelings. Your feelings are the vibrational signature that sets the law in motion.

2. Fear of failure.

People are afraid to get what they want. They are afraid of being disappointed and not getting it. They feel unworthy of asking. And they are even afraid of what will happen if they do get it. These fears and others are disguised as doubts, rationalizations, and anxiety. Unless there is a complete lack of resistance to getting what you want it will not show up.

3. Unclear vision.

People are not clear what they want. Unless there is a clear vision and a strong sense of what it means to you, things will not show up.

4. Reluctance to pay attention to intuition.

Sometimes your answer comes as an idea. This idea is subtle. If you do not pay attention to your subtle faculties and develop it, the answer to your problem may very well have shown up but you did not notice it.

5. Reluctance to act.

Sometimes by acting you speed up everything. The action to take is the action before you. Even if action is not necessary, as the answer may come from a person or event that has to show up in your experience, action reinforces the energy that you have sent out. It is making a statement that you are in earnest. The use of feet and hands has an amazing way of putting you in the right place at the right time. The Master Practitioner may not need to act, but at an earlier development stage, it does speed up results.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

It is not really clear whether humanity developed intelligence because it was curious or its curiosity developed its intelligence. It could very well be a combination of both, with our natural genetic capacity for inquiry stimulating more complex and interconnected neural nets and bigger brains.

For a long time, psychologists believed that intelligence was fixed, but new evidence shows that the more we learn, the more neural connections are formed and the more we can learn.

The driving force behind all learning is curiosity, the desire to know, to explore, to experience new things.

A curious lesson about the implications of appreciating and withdrawing from curiosity occurred between 1405 and 1433, when the Ming government, under the foresighted Yongle Emperor decided to establish a Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean basin. He assigned Zheng He 317 ships, with 28,000 armed troops. This expedition awed the people of the coastlines, who were amazed by the nine-masted ships. These were the biggest ships ever known in the world, with a technology about 500 years ahead of its time.

During his first three voyages, Zheng He visited southeast Asia, India, and Ceylon, and on the next one, he traveled as far as East Africa. Liberally dispensing gifts of silk, porcelain, and other Chinese wonders, he also received amazing presents from his hosts.
The Chinese people learned much about other people, their customs, and their deities. Zheng He was also respectful. For example, in Ceylon, they erected monuments honoring Buddha, Allah, and Vishnu. They also astonished the people back home when they brought back “mythological animals” like the Zebra and the Giraffe.

Suddenly the world of the Chinese people expanded beyond belief, as did those of the people visited.

Zheng He himself was reported to be a remarkable man, who was rumored to be very tall and broad and walked like a tiger. Chinese scholars escorted him, drew nautical maps and wrote fabulous reports on all that was being discovered.

Then in 1424, the Yongle Emperor died and with him the curiosity aroused by the Chinese expeditions. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor, who reigned from 1424 to 1425 slowly eroded the popularity of the expeditions. He was followed by the Xuande Emperor, who permitted one last expedition, during which time Zheng He died and was buried at sea.

A huge surge of conservatism not only ended the expeditions, but the bureaucrats even went as far as to destroy all known records of the expeditions. The nautical charts were burned. The treasure ships sat in the harbors until they rotted away. And the technology of how to build such sophisticated ships gradually passed into oblivion.

Zheng He discovered many countries, including Sumatra, Malacca, Java, Ceylon, India, Persia, the Persian Gulf, Arabia, the Red Sea, Africa, and Taiwan. He brought back to China trophies and envoys from more than 30 kingdoms. His records and maps may even have shown the Americas, Antarctica, and the tip of Africa.

What killed China’s exploration of the world? Chinese bureaucrats steeped in Neo-Confucianism thought that since China was obviously the greatest civilization in the world that they had nothing to gain from mixing with foreign people.

China became insular and the Western World, so far behind in technology and the learning arts began to catch up. Eventually, a few centuries later, by the time of the Opium Wars, the small island of Britain had enough technology to completely humiliate this giant country and seize its major ports.

And just as the decline of a whole civilization can be traced back to the eclipse of curiosity, even on an individual level, most people only enjoy a brief expedition into learning about new worlds. After their schooling years, most people settle into a routine of quiet desperation and fail to realize that they live in a world of wonder and mystery.

The wonders of learning are enormous; besides personal growth, there is a thrill to it that makes everything else pale in comparison. Here for example is the poetic euphoria felt by Zheng He:

“We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course (as rapidly) as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare.” (Tablet erected by Zhen He, Changle, Fujian, 1432.)

Conservative scholars at court, clinging to an outmoded philosophy, did not realize that
with the death of curiosity, they had also condemned the future of a great civilization. 100 years before Columbus opened up the Americas, China lost its chance to know and explore the world.

Without a sense of wonder, life is but a petty affair. Whenever a civilization, a country, an institution, or a person loses it, their world shrinks and entropy begins. Entrenched in the quotidian, life loses its luster, and the promise of what could be fades away like a dying sunset.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

The universe is a dance of possibilities. You dance with it when you fall into a flow, a rhythm, where more of the possibilities that you desire start to show up.

Carl Jung called this state of “meaningful coincidences” synchronicity.

The classical true story of the golden scarab beetle best illustrates it.

In an article called, “Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle,” Carl G. Jung shares a true story that has now become a classic example:

“A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.” [Coll. Works, vol. 8, 843]

Jung explains “The meaningful connection is obvious enough … in view of the approximate identity of the chief objects (the scarab and the beetle).” [CW, vol. 8, 845]

The scarab beetle showed up because the patient was stuck in a thoroughly rationalistic point-of-view, which prevented her from experiencing insight into her problems.

The timely appearance of the scarab beetle, something that stood outside the realm of rationality, caused her to experience the paradigm shift that she needed to experience psychic healing.

This transformation in her psyche was a symbol of rebirth.

As Jung wrote: “The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky.” [CW, vol. 8, 845]

Here is another example, told by Jung.

A man named Monsieur Deschamps had a neighbor, Monsieur de Fontgibu, who gave him his first plum pudding when he was a young boy. In Paris ten years later, Deschamps orders plum pudding in a restaurant but discovers that the last serving was sold to de Fontgibu, who is unexpectedly in town and at that same restaurant. Years later, Deschamps is once again offered plum pudding at a social gathering. As Deschamps tells the gathering about the earlier coincidences, he is shocked to see de Fontgibu, now a senile old man, barge in through the door, having mistaken the room for another place that he had been seeking.

Rationalists like to oppose the idea of synchronicity as apophenia, a tendency of the mind to seek and perceive connections between unrelated phenomena.

However, apart from the obvious fact that synchronicity appears to have a strong meaning to those who experience it, sometimes transforming them in a way that they could not have imagined, like Jung’s ultra-rational patient who needed a nudge by the universe to have her psychological breakthrough, an even stronger argument to support the Jungian “discovery” of synchronicity, I believe can be found in viewing the situation from the perspective of quantum physics and the idea of an intelligent universe.

Everything is energy and this energy is organized by intelligence. This intelligence is not individual but cosmic; it is an impersonal, non-linear, infinite organizing awareness.

Thus, we live in three domains.

There is the domain of the “world of appearance.” This is the every day world where an oak tree is a solid mass of wood that can hurt your foot if you kick it.

There is the domain of “the quantum world.” This is where the oak tree is not at all solid but a constellation of atoms, which at the subatomic level is not a collection of solid things, but only patterns of probability that dance in and out of existence.

Then there is the domain of “pure intelligence.” This is the infinite organizing intelligence that organizes the life-form of the tree so that it grows from an acorn into an oak tree.

Since at the quantum level, every particle appears to be in instant communication with every other particle, at the level of the world of appearance, a thought is an attractive force that brings more of what you think about into your experience. Thus, through the agency of pure intelligence acting on the quantum field, thoughts, which are wavelengths, affect other wavelengths to bring you the subject of your thoughts.

In order to tap into the flow of synchronicity, a connection with pure consciousness and with the quantum world is necessary. This connection is established through a specific pattern of thought, which we call an intention.

Carlos Castaneda’s definition of intention best explains how it is the connecting force between the three domains. He says, “In the universe, there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”

The dance of the universe is the flow of synchronicity, and this synchronicity is something that you can invite into your life by holding the intention of consciously creating your reality.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul