Siddara Betta Trek on March 25th 2012 - Continued Part 3

I had decided to first explore the summit of Siddarabetta and only later explore the cave temple and all other caves at a slightly lower level. While we were descending from the summit to the cave temple, Vinod informed me that a Nepali Sadhu had arrived last Monday (we were trekking the following Sunday) and was living in the cave and performing intense Sadhana (extremely rigorous spiritual practices) and had not eaten anything since the past five days. Since he did not know the local language he could not interact with the locals. I was curious to meet this person and interview him if possible. We gradually descended to the level of the cave temple, removed our footwear and devoutly entered the cave.

We were shown the Shiva Linga and is called Siddeshwara. It is a tiny black linga with a hooded serpent of metal. It was adorned with flower garlands and other assorted flowers like hibiscus. After a brief prayer we decided to venture deeper into the cave.

Rugged Path to Rudra Muneeshwar Gaduge

As we negotiated low hanging rocks on top and rugged boulders strewn on the floor, we arrived at a bright chamber. We saw two tiny rooms both of which had doors that were closed. Vinod informed me that the Nepali Sadhu was in one of the rooms. I made a somewhat hesitant effort to rouse the sadhu to open the door. I spoke out loud in Hindi that I had been to Nepal and to Katmandu and asked if I could speak to him. I was feeling extremely hesitant as I was afraid I might be interrupting his spiritual practises. Vinod later tapped on the door and presently he opened a tiny window with an iron mesh screen and briefly acknowledged us. Not wishing to disturb him further we bade farewell and proceeded deeper into the cave.  We had to crawl through about twelve feet of extremely low hanging rock with barely three feet clearance and then emerged to a somewhat spacious chamber that was quite dark. We lit our electric torches and were surprised to find a few monkeys even here.

Low roofed caves to be negotiated

Jeevantha Samadhi (Live grave) of Venkatappa Avadhutha

Vinod pointed to a rocky platform and said that this was what was called in Kannada as the RudraMuneeshwara Gaduge (Rudramuneeshwara's Seat) where the Sadhu was supposed to have lived during the reign of Kurangaraya.  Just four or five feet opposite this platform was a mound with a slit to one side and which Vinod said was the Jivanth Samadhi (live grave?!) of Venkatappa Avadhootha. My guru later told me that this Venkatappa is quite different from the Guru of Shirdi Sai Baba.  Vinod further explained that the slit was there in the mound to facilitate the prana of Venkata Avadhutha who, they all believe, is still alive in the grave.


All the fotos that I have put in the blog are from a still camera with a flash. A video camera recording would have been quite spectacular. I provide a link to a video recording further below.

Meditating on Rudramuneeshwara Gaduge (Seat)

I sat on the Rudra Muneeshwara Gaduge and meditated for a few minutes. Later we explored a small underground source of refreshingly cold sweet water just beside the Gaduge. This spring is called Suvarnagundi as the hill is also known as Suvarnagiri. Vinod asked me if I was game to have a bath in that water. When I eagerly assented (I had brought a spare underwear and towel from Bangalore based on my readings of other blogs) he made me sit on a rock about five feet away,  fetched a vessel and poured out five large measures of water on my head.

The spring named Suvarna Gundi

After drying myself with a towel and dressing up, we decided to retrace our path to the exit. On our way back we were happy to find that the Nepali Sadhu had flung the door of his room wide open. He invited us to be seated and spread a mattress. On enquiry we found that his name was Jyoteshwar Das and that he was from a location near Pashpathi Nath temple in Katmandu, though he presently lived in some other remote part of Nepal. We were surprised to hear he was only 27 years old and had had also lived in Texas and New York where he had worked in the accounting line. His guru's name was Balak Das and was supposed to have been from South India. His guru had advised him to move to the south of India and by some convolute route and with the help of some person he met, he found himself in the caves of Siddarabetta. 

Jyoteshwar Das - the Nepali Sadhak in the cave at Siddarabetta

He said he had acquired some power over his bodily needs through intense sadhana. He said that though all these local villagers were saying that he had not eaten for five days, he had a meager stock of beaten rice (poha in Hindi) with which he was feeding himself somewhat. He later informed us that he was getting intuitive messages that his friend was in some need and that he had to leave for Tumkur immediately. Presently Karthik, Jyoteshwar Das and I descended to the foot of the hill after paying our guide Vinod a small sum of 300 rupees for his guidance.

We reached the base at 3:50 p.m and left for Bangalore at 4:10 p.m. The speedometer reading was 83115 at Siddarabetta. This time we headed towards Tumbadi and Koratagere and thence to Dobbspet and Bangalore. We had a break of about 50 minutes at Uradigere where Karthik wanted to buy fresh vegetables. It is only after we entered the Bangalore Division from the Tumkur Division on
SH3 that we found the quality of the road to be good. The other drawback on this route is that there are quite a lot of dangerous curves and the route is rather sinuous. Further, as is the tendency of many rural folk especially in Karnataka there are many unmarked badly constructed speedbreakers that can be quite dangerous to a motorbike rider. The route we had taken in the morning had none of these flaws and we had a safe ride.  On our return journey we were at Yeshwantpur, Bangalore at 7:10 p.m. and reached Rajajinagar (Karthik's house) at 7:30 p.m. The kilometer reading at home was 83218 meaning that it had taken us 103 km on a return journey.


For an interesting short video on exploring the caves at Siddarabetta click on the Youtube link given below: (be sure to connect your speakers !)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqla6BlT-xw&feature=colike



Thus ended an exhilarating Sunday in the month of March 2012  !


                                                                    Concluded

Siddara Betta Trek on March 25th 2012 - Continued

We arrived at the foot of Siddarabetta precisely at 11:00 a.m. The kilometer reading on the motorbike was 83114.4 but we have to take into account the extra 2 or 3 km distance we made to visit Seebi. This hill falls in the Survey of India Toposheet 57G/2. The map shows that the contours at the foot of the hill are around 880 m  (i.e. around 2900 feet) and the summit is at 1227 m or 4050 feet.  The climbing of the hill hence involves an ascent of roughly 1150 feet.  Devotees buy fruits and offerings to the Deity on top but are rudely deprived of them by aggressive monkeys that boldly pounce on the hapless victims and snatch it away. The ascent is gradual in the initial stages and there are steps of rock slabs laid out in the soil at the foot of the hill. (foto on left)

Gradually the slope becomes more steep and steps have sometimes been cast out of concrete and at other places have been carved out of rock. 

At places railings have been provided for support but at many places where the slope is steep, there are neither steps nor railings. For persons who are not too sure of their feet it is advisable to carry a sturdy walking stick to negotiate slippery rock slopes. This stick would double up as a defence against attacking monkeys.



For a man not in the peak of fitness and who is sixty years old, it would take about one hour to ascend to the cave temple where a Shiva linga with a metal hood of a snake is placed within the cave.  Before you enter the cave you are asked to remove your footwear and a person will guard it for you for the payment of a nominal fee (5 rupees). Be sure to carry adequate supplies of bottled water (can be bought very chilled at Tovinakere by people who follow the route suggested by us, or at Koratagere by people who follow the other route).  We found that the water had retained its coldness even when we reached the summit. For trekkers who wish to snack at the summit we suggest that you carry it from home or from Tumkur. Along the route only cut seasonal fruits - we found muskmelon and watermelon in late March - and of course, bananas are sold. Refreshing cups of tea or salted buttermilk are available at the top for the fatigued.

 I was lucky to meet a youth of about 21 years called Vinod who offered to guide me around the caves and other spots of interest. I was interested in scaling the summit and hence enlisted his help. He is a student and does not specify any fee for his effort but leaves it to your discretion. (Vinod's Mobile No. 90193 44608  he is available on Sundays and holidays) He took us first to the summit which you have to reach by crawling through crevices formed in the rock. (see foto on right)

By weaving through boulders and crevices we reached what is called the Ardha Chandra Sarovar at some distance below the summit. This is a tiny pond with water filled with algae that gives it an ominous green colour.

 Further ascent takes you to the ruins of a fort at the summit.  Our guide Vinod tells me that these were built in the 16th Century by a local chieftain called Kurangaraya.  He also tells me that the hill has been referred to as Suvarnagiri.  It was during Kurangaraya's time that Siddhi Purushas like Rudramuneeshwara inhabited the caves that are found on this hill.
But more about that later !



From the summit you get spectacular views of the surrounding terrain as seen in the following photographs:

View from Summit

Karthik and Vinod view the scarp face

There is another Shiva temple with a linga on the summit. The summit has a sheet layer of granite that forms an impressive tabletop like structure. The foto on the left shows Karthik and Vinod approaching the Shiva temple fashioned out of rock slabs.

The Shiva Linga inside the temple.

A Panoramic view from a point midway up the hill (scene formed by fusing photographs)

                                                                                     Continued in Part 3 ...

The Siddara Betta Trek on March 25th 2012

These days with excellent technological support like Google Earth, and to a lesser extent Google Maps, one can really plan well for a trek from Bangalore to a place like Siddarabetta. I began by consulting various blogs on this topic and had mustered up a lot of useful information. Most of the blogs had favoured the route from Bangalore to Dobbspet by National Highway 4 (48) and thence taking the Dobbspet - Koratagere road that passes through Uradigere and Irakalsandra which is connected by Karnataka State Highway No. 3. The SH 3 joins SH 33 and at the junction one has to turn eastward to reach Koratagere.  We were advised to proceed along the same road a further six km beyond Koratagere to a place called Tumbadi where a conspicuous arch in Kannada to the left announces the road to Siddarabetta which is about 10 km west of Tumbadi.

Many blogs had complained about the quality of the road to Koratagere from Dobbspet we hence decided to try out an alternate approach. We consulted Google earth and decided to proceed up to a village called Nelahalu which is on the eastern side of the National Highway and is accessed by electing to turn on to the right at the median on the National Highway at 90 Km stone, and entering the Service road and proceeding about a kilometer or two to the north to reach Nelahalu.

                  (A motorbike turning into the road to Tovinakere from Nelahalu)

At Nelahalu a road branches off to the east to Tovinakere which is exactly 10 km from Nelahalu. On proceeding another kilometer along the same road we encounter a village called Jonigarahalli and just beyond the village  a road veers off to the left to Siddarabetta. Siddarabetta is about 8.5 km from Jonigarahalli.

After Jonigarahalli village the road branching off to left to Siddarabetta

The advantage of this route to Siddarabetta from Bangalore is that one travels on a very good road - the National Highway 4(48) for most of the distance. The road from Nelahalu to Tovinakere is quite bad at places but is mostly in quite a serviceable condition. One has to negotiate only 10 km of bad road and that too till Tovinakere and then again the road from Jonigarahalli to Siddarabetta - a distance of 8 km is in very good condition.

Just to test out the condition of the road from Siddarabetta to Bangalore via Koratagere-Uradigere-Dobbspet, we chose that route for our return trip and we felt that we had enjoyed the other route through Nelahalu-Tovinakere-Jonigarahalli better and felt it was more comfortable. I have to mention here that on the Bangalore-Nelahalu-Siddarabetta route one travels about 8 or 9 Km more but this is offset by the road being very much better.

We made the trip by a motorbike and hence has mobike riders as target audience. I specifically say this because mobikes are exempted from paying any fee or waiting in a queue at all toll stations enroute. Car owners may have to shell out a payment of 25 rupees thrice, adding to a total expense in tolls of about 75 rupees.

I was joined in this trek by my former colleague Karthik who works for the Geological Survey of India as a photographer. He is junior to me by almost thirty years and has a greater agility and fitness to negotiate the hill slopes, and at crucial times, he was very helpful as he carried my knapsack in addition to his own.

We left my friend's house at Rajajinagar precisely at 6:30 a.m. with the kilometer reading at 83000. About 5.5 ltrs of petrol was filled and our first stop was at Kamat Upachar at a reading of 83044. This Highway Restaurant comes about 1.5 km before Dobbspet.

The restaurant was of average quality and for a plate of Masala Dosa and a plate of two idlis and a vada and one coffee we paid roughly 90 rupees.

An adjacent building with an attractive facade sported the name 'Fleurs - Clean Toilets'. We were pleasantly surprised to find this announcement, but inside the ugly Indian had violated the wash basins with paan spittle and had not taken care to wash off the stains. There were empty mineral water bottles strewn about too.

After a comfortable breakfast we were on our way and just before Dobbspet we saw a roadsign announcing a deviation to Siddarabetta. We  briefly contemplated whether to elect this route, but decided to go ahead with the plan of going through Nelahalu. We never stopped anywhere and had a continuous ride to Nelahalu.

At the 90 km stone (uprooted by vandals?) we crossed the median and entered the service road to Nelahalu. Karthik had heard of a Narasimhaswami Temple at a place called Seebi in the vicinity of Nelahalu (about a mile further up along the highway). He was keen to visit the temple and offer prayers there. We hence spent about 20-30 minutes there before heading along the road to Tovinakere.

Distant view of Siddarabetta at the rear







                                                                            

                                                                                        Continued in Part 2  ...

An Immigrant's Extraordinarily Inspirational Story

This is a TED Talk by Tan Le who escaped from Vietnam in what was disguised to be a fishing vessel. They ran the risk of capture by the Vietnamese and later faced the threat of attack by pirates. She says her mother was armed with a bottle of poison  - first to be swallowed by Tan Le and her sister, and then by her mother and grandmother in the event of capture!

Listen to this extremely moving tale of an immigrant who ifrst moved to Australia and thence to the U.S.

Tune up your speakers and click on the link below:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_my_immigration_story.html



Deepak

The Other Side of Religious Experience

At first I thought of naming this post as 'Cause of The Big Bang Found' and wanted to expand that the real cause of the Big Bang is 'Temporal Lobe Epillepsy'! (meaning the Creator is due to it). But then I realised it would be trivialising the work of many who are pursuing their work in all earnestness and sincerity.

Recent investigations by neuroscientists have found indications to suggest that temporal lobe activity in the brain could be the reason for 'spiritual experiences' that people are supposed to experience. They find that there is great variation in such activity in temporal lobes in various people and can range from non-sensitive to highly sensitive. The more sensitive individuals are likely to be more prone to spiritual experiences that can range from a feeling of 'some presence' to actual hallucinatory visions.

Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran, a famous neuroscientist of the University of California in San Diego subjected various subjects to galvanic skin response studies and found that people with unusual temporal lobe activity reacted to words suggestive of 'sex' with a lower value and words suggestive of 'religion' with a higher value - which is supposed to be the reverse of what is usually seen in 'normal' people.
A Canadian doctor Dr. Michael Persinger of Laurentian University has subjected a many human subjects to variable intensities of electromagnetic fields and is eager to report his findings.

I give the link below to a very interesting video pertaining to studies conducted in the field of spiritual experiences, electromagnetism and temporal lobe epilepsy.

Please turn on your speakers and click on the link below to watch the video titled 'God on the Brain':


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7991385426492181792&hl=en




This doesn't explain the phenomenon of actual material objects also appearing in conjunction with 'hallucinatory' visual images as it is seen to happen in the case of Smt. Shanthamma of whom I've mentioned in earlier blogs.



                                        xxx

Other Problems with the Theory of Evolution

A brief digression

As I go about building up this post I want to state at the outset that the purpose of the past five blogs is to strongly suggest the possible existence of the Divine and Intelligence behind many phenomena that scientists are wont to dismiss as happening without purpose.  This world view has arisen largely out of the tremendous advancements in biology, geology, physics, and other sciences.  We should also not ignore as contributory factors various tragedies of the 20th Century and the immense sufferings that humans underwent throughout the world in the form of wars and internecine strifes.  The scale of human suffering seemed incompatible with the existence of the Divine, since He was supposed to infuse meaning into human lifes, whereas Man seemed to have lost all understanding and all meaning of his existence.

At a personal level I felt, however erroneous it now seems, that I was singled out for a great deal of suffering. I now see that I was, to put it mildly, rather too sensitive and to put it in plain terms, I was a rather spoilt child who could not reconcile why there had to be pain.  There were many ways in which I was quite comfortable, but my mind always seemed to fixate on the pain. To briefly expand on these matters, it had turned out that due to some financial constraints I was made to jump classes from upper kindergarten to the fifth standard without having been given adequate preparatory coaching before admission to the higher class.  My class teacher of the fifth standard had been particularly uncharitable and would mock at me calling me 'small baby' (which no child would like to hear among his peers) and other taunting nicknames. The foundation of my education having been destroyed, I found it extremely difficult to cope with studies and was in constant dread of being thrashed at home and at school. My family being, what is called in India, a joint family, I found things not too satisfactory at home also.  While my cousins were all being showered with praises for excelling academically I was considered a sort of unworthy outlier in a statistical population of gifted children.

But then there were many good times too.  However contradictory it seemed - that we had  financial problems - yet we lived in a spacious bungalow with a large garden (it is rather difficult to explain this matter and needs a lot of elaboration that seems unnecessary). Amongst all my friends I was the only one who had a complete set of cricket equipment, and as boys the whole neighbourhood used to play in our garden.  It is even true that as a child of four to seven years I had more toys than my peers. It is also true that I was the only kid among all my peers who would be taken out to fairly good restaurants once in two or three months and treated to the dishes of my choice which I now fondly recollect - Cold chocolate milk shake and assorted cakes and patties.  Yet as a child I could not see these happy occasions as of definitive importance and would only obssess on the pain that I had to face. In my defence I clarify that entire weeks would be spent suffering at school and the treats would come only on some rare sundays but then, my friends didn't even have those!

I grew up quite disenchanted with my circumstances and when the opportunity afforded me to get acquainted with literature and smatterings of philosophical works, my mind immediately embraced those works that denied the existence of God. Given to self-pity, I even imagined that my life was as hopeless and meaningless as those of Kafka's heroes.  I grew quite cynical and self-centred obsessively pondering on my problems and growing more and more bitter. Matters came to a head when I was ditched by my girlfriend (1983) and there was a complete nervous breakdown associated with thought disorders, psychosis, depression and anxiety.

 {Question - which is a preferable expression above and why? - 1. "I was ditched by my girlfriend"   2. "My girlfriend ditched me"   (and I'm not talking about active or passive voice, but rather the approach to life)  } (Don't say both are preferable to "My girlfriend married me!" or rather "I married my girlfriend")

Despite all my friends' and well-wishers' exhortations I just could not get to react positively to the events of my life.  I had got into the mould of seeing only the dark aspects of life and had lost all hopes of a happy future ahead of me.

The Pendulum Swings ! - 2

Material for this post has been taken extensively from 'The Fossil Record' by Sean D. Pitman

(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)


While the geological and  biological evidences are rather overwhelmingly in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution and the geological principle of Uniformitarianism, some of the anomalies in the geologic record are striking:-


Polystrate Trees:
The first among them are 'Polystrate Trees' or petrified trees that extend through multiple strata.  Many of them extend vertically through millions  of years of sedimentary rock. How can this phenomenon be explained? A common explanation is that these do not represent areas of the standard geologic column but areas of rapid local flooding and sedimentation. Therefore, the layers that these trees pass through do not represent thousands and millions of years. However, a petrified tree (located near Katherine Hill Bay next to Flat Rocks Point, Australia) extends up through many sedimentary layers and through two separated coal seams.  The tree itself is twelve feet tall, and was uncovered by a coal mining company. If the two separated coal seams represent long periods of time, how could this tree extend between them both? This is a difficulty for the current understanding of science. Further the layers themselves show no weathering between one layer and the next even though each layer was supposedly the surface of the earth for thousands if not millions of years.  To many, these combined mysteries are more easily explained by rapid underwater burial with quickly forming sediments. Many argue that the theory that each fossil bearing layer in the geologic column represents eons of time seems inadequate to explain such problems that are easily explained by quick catastrophic events.



Fossil Orientation
It is quite interesting to note that fossilized trees are not like what one would expect from the normal evolutionary picture of what happened.  According to current popular scientific belief many fossilized trees were buried naturally either as they lay fallen on the ground or as they stood while growing.  However, what is unique about almost all fossilized trees is that they do not have roots or branches and little bark if any.  The ones that have fallen and are lying horizontally also align themselves in the same general direction.   Many fossilized seashells and tree leaves too are oriented relative to each other in many parts of the  fossil record.  The trees in the forests of today do not do orient themselves when they fall.  They fall in a fairly random way without a statistical significance in their orientation. This is doesn't seem to be the case with petrified trees. Petrified trees seem to line up.  Even the vertical ones seem to have a particular orientation.  What could have caused these trees to lose all their roots, branches, and bark and to line up in the same direction as every other tree in that layer?  A similar effect was seen during the floods of Mt. St. Helen’s eruptions - they lost all their roots, branches and bark, and were all lined up in the same general direction; even the ones that sank vertically into the lakes.  Scientists at the National Petrified Forest in Arizona freely speculate that the petrified trees of that “forest” were “washed”  into their current positions judging from the fact that they generally have no branches, roots, or bark.  They all appear as though they were in some sort of catastrophe together.

 Other Problematic Considerations:

1. The Morrison Formation of the Late Jurassic age in western United States has a profusion of various animal fossils like fossil fish, frogs, lizards, salamanders, crocodiles, pterosaurs, shrew to rat-sized mammals, dinosaur eggs and is one of the richest zones of dinosaur fossils, particularly of the plant-eating species. This Formation has a strange scarcity of plant fossils prompting the question as to how such species of large herbivorous dinosaurs like Apatosaurus that seemed to need three to four tons of vegetation per day could survive in an environment that seem to be bereft of vegetation judging by the scarcity of plant fossils.

2. Coal Seams: According to modern science, coal forms from peat bogs.  Over a great many years, the peat becomes thicker and thicker.  After being covered by a sedimentary layer, the immense pressure and heat combined with water, changes the organic material chemically into coal.  It is thought to take about 6 feet of organic material to make one foot of coal.  However, this theory has trouble explaining a few interesting facts.
Coal seams, such as those found in Powder River Basin, Wyoming, US ranging from 150 to 200 feet in depth, point to a rapid coalification process. "These coal seams run remarkably thick and unsullied by other material. Usually, unwanted sediments, such as clay, washes over a deposit before coal seams can get very thick. This leaves scientists with the baffling question of how the seams get so massive and still remain undiluted by influxes of clay and other impurities (such as sulfur etc.) before they thicken."  This is quite a mystery considering the fact that a seam of coal 200 feet thick would have taken a layer of organic material over 1,200 feet thick to create it.  That is a lot of peat to be in just one area.  But, what makes this even more unbelievable is that the Powder River Basin covers an area of over 10,000 square miles.  This problem could be solved with the idea of a massive flood deposition of huge quantities of organic material in a very rapid timeframe.  Similar deposits of huge amounts of plant material occurred during the Mt. St. Helen’s eruption and flooding by Spirit Lake.

3. Stacked Forests

In different places throughout the world, there can be found layers of “forests” one on top of each other, with their trees, “in the position of growth” (still standing up).  It is also said that these forests each have their own layer of “soil”.  So it is felt that each of these were forests grew over long periods of time on top of previous forests, each of which was buried by some long ago catastrophe.  What is interesting about these places ( Yellowstone National Park where up to 65 different layers can be found with trees in the vertical position)  is that the trees are still oriented in their positions with each other.  Their “soil” is also found to be water sorted (coarse to fine), and often is found half way up a tree instead of at its base. This organic material also averages only 3 cm in thickness and, for many of the "forest" layers it is missing altogether.  In some areas, such as at Mt. Hornaday, as many as 43% of the forest layers have no organic layer at all.  The lower layers of Specimen Creek generally do have organic layers (96%), but the upper layers of Specimen Creek have far fewer organic layers.  It turns out that the average "forest" without an organic layer  is about 24%.  It seems rather strange for a forest to grow into full bloom without forming an organic layer.  How is this explained? 
There are other problems too about these stacked forests of Yellowstone related to sorting of organic layers; sparseness of pine needles even in areas where conifers dominate; absence of fossil pollen; rarity of clay bands whereas abundant unweathered feldspars scattered throughout the Yellowstone organic layers; absence of animal fossils in these layers; these are all problematic areas for uniformitarianism and a long protracted period of earth history.

 But there seems to be an overwhelming hurry to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction - to brand every event as due to a catastrophic flooding. This tendency must be avoided and a proper balance of seeing uniformitarian events as they are, and catastrophic events as they are, should be encouraged.

The Pendulum Swings ! - 1

In my own lifetime I've seen the pendulum of scientific opinion swinging over wide ranges. I remember that some years back, each man was advised to drink over a two litres of water a day. Just recently I read the results of a scientific investigation that cautioned against excessive ingestion of water, and that the body automatically seeks water by feeling thirst whenever water is needed. The study also observed that the needs of water vary from person to person and there is no standardised rule that every person must compulsorily drink a specified quantity of water. Likewise some years ago coconut was considered to be quite a dangerous commodity to consume due to its cholestrol content and my nephew and neice scrupulously avoided it. Again I read recently that coconut is not in fact dangerous, and can be safely eaten. Well ! Scientific opinion can vary over wide ranges.

The situation can however become somewhat dangerous when the Weltanschauung (world view) of a majority of people is guided by opinions that may or may not be fully grounded in reality. The opinions of a majority of 'well-informed' people, who have their world view well grounded in modern science, dismiss the view that there is 'Intelligence' behind the workings of the cosmos. It is generally regarded by most people that all scientists base their opinions on cold logic brewed with healthy empirical evidences and that they do not have personal predelictions to bias their views one way or the other. As I have shown in the previous blogs there have been recorded instances to suggest that this assumption is without basis.

Most educated men have their world view derived mainly from what they have heard of Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution'. While I too strongly affirm the overwhelming evidences in favour of the evolutionary theory which, in addition to biological evidences, drew a lot of strength from a host of geological evidences that were strongly promoted by Charles Lyell, I  would also like to bring into people's consideration some of the problems in both the geological record and in the biological evidences. 

Firstly, let me put forth evidences in support of evolution of life:

1. If there is a vertical stack of books, it is obvious that (in normal circumstances) the book at the bottom most level must have been placed the earliest and the succeding ones later and later till at the very top the latest book would have been kept. There could be exceptions of course and it could happen that a book could be inserted later somewhere in the middle, bu this is rather exceptional. A similar thing happens when beds of sedimentary rocks are laid down and this establishes a rule of the 'Order of Superposition' where the oldest beds in a normal sequence are the bottom most. In actuality in the field complications can arise due to folding and fracturing of rocks (faulting) when It can happen that an older bed may be found to overlie a younger bed, and in such cases the beds are reversed.

2. It is generally observed that the oldest rocks (established as older both by Order of Superposition and other evidences like radiometric dating) are generally without evidences of life. As one goes up in the geological stack one sees a progression from 'simple life forms' like single celled animals like bacteria, algae, and unicellular organisms and as one goes higher and higher he first finds invertebrates, and later vertebrates. The oldest vertebrates encountered are the fishes and later the amphibians and thence the reptiles and later the birds and lastly the mammals.

3.  As of today (February 22nd 2012) no mammalian fossils have been found in, say, the rocks of the Devonian Period. And as of today, no human fossils have been found in the rocks of, say, the Eocene.

4. The Geologic Column constructed out of a combination of various evidences that include palaeontological (fossils), radiometric dating, structural evidences and petrological (study of rocks) is so compelling that to my mind there seems to be scarce possibilities of doubt.

                                                     To be continued ...

Debates in Science - 2

The material for this post has essentially been taken from J Harlen Bretz And the Great Scabland Debate by Sean D. Pitman.

(I apologise for taking material without permission but I am doing it only because they help me to make a point that otherwise would be difficult)

The concluding comments have been taken from Wikipedia.

(... Continued from the previous blogpost.)


        It was only around 1940 that things began to slowly change for Bretz. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle Washington, many papers were presented in a session entitled, Quaternary Geology of the Pacific, which strongly supported a non-catastrophic origin for the channelled scablands.
 
  Finally, Pardee, the eighth speaker of the session, spoke benignly about the "Ripple Marks in Glacial Lake Missoula."  In a low key manner Pardee described the huge "ripple marks"  with heights of up to 15 meters and spacings of as much as 150 meters, as due to flooding, as well as his old theory that Lake Missoula was the source of the water that obviously created the unusual current beds found in the Montana prairie region. He went on to suggest that about 2,000 cubic km of water were held in the lake and that the evidence showed that a glacial dam had once blocked off the mouth of this lake. He presented convincing evidence, to include severely scoured constrictions in the lake basin, huge bars of current-transported debris, and giant current ripple marks, which all strongly suggested that the ice dam had been breached in a very dramatic fashion. Pardee went on to propose that the way this occurred was that the ice dam had blocked the water until the water became deep enough to lift up the ice dam and allow the blocked water to rush out with almost unimaginable force so that the lake was completely emptied within just 48 hours. He suggested that the lobe of the Cordilleran Glacier was the actual plug or dam that blocked the Clark Fork River. This ice dam caused the formation of Lake Missoula (4,150 feet above sea level) to reach a depth of about 2,000 feet over some 3,000 square miles. When the ice dam failed, 500 cubic miles of water rushed out of Lake Missoula at 50 to 60 miles per hour (or 9.46 cubic miles per hour), which translates into a 2,000 foot wall of water smashing with Herculean force all the way to the pacific ocean.

Today it is believed that this huge flood of water rushed across Idaho's northern Rathdrum Prairie and into eastern Washington where it divided into three huge flows, each up to 600 feet deep traveling at 45 miles per hour.  To understand a bit of this magnitude, this flow was ten times more massive than the flow of all the rivers in the entire world today. As this flood raged across the Spokane Valley and out across the loess-covered basalt plateau, it carved out the 20-mile-wide Cheney-Palouse Tract, the 14-mile-wide Crab Creek Channel, and the 50-mile-long Grand Coulee as well as numerous cross or "braided" channels.

Pardee's evidence for the origin of massive amounts of flood waters was, of course, just what Bretz needed. This evidence was just enough proof for Bretz to confirm the source for and cause of the watery cataclysm that he knew must be there somewhere. All the rest fell into place since all the information to back up the effects of such a cataclysm had already been ready and waiting for many years.

 In 1952 Bretz made yet another field trip to the scablands and returned with even more evidence to include detailed maps, aerial photographs, and sedimentological information. In his subsequent 1956 paper, Bretz concluded that the most convincing evidence for a cataclysmic flood proved to be the presence of giant current ripples on bar surfaces. These ripples clearly showed that bars up to 30 meters high were completely inundated by phenomenal flows of water. Numerous examples of giant current ripples were found on the same bars that Flint had interpreted as normal river terraces. As it turns out, Pardee's recognition of the giant current ripples of Lake Missoula was followed by Bretz's documentation of 15 more scabland ripple fields and then by Baker's and Nummedal's identification of 100 more rippled areas. Such features could only have been produced by the flow of very deep water at velocities of truly enormous catastrophic proportions. This was the beginning of early acceptance and painful recognition of the validity of Bretz's position by geologists.

Bretz's remarkable work was built painstakingly over many years, but he had to fight great opposition for many decades for its final acceptance. Finally, in 1979, the geological establishment publicly acknowledged Bretz's work by awarding him the prestigious Penrose Medal - the most prestigious honor in the field of geology. Bretz was in his late 90s, and had been holding the line for more than 50 years before finally realizing general acceptance of his "insane" catastrophic model for the formation of the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington State.

Uniformitarianism was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism, which states that the distant past "consisted of epochs of paroxysmal and catastrophic action interposed between periods of comparative tranquility"   Especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most geologists took this interpretation to mean that catastrophic events are not at all important in geologic time.  An important result of the Scabland debate discussed above and others was the re-clarification that, while the same principles operate in geologic time, catastrophic events that are infrequent on human time-scales can have important consequences in geologic history.  Derek Ager has noted that “geologists do not deny uniformitarianism in its true sense, that is to say, of interpreting the past by means of the processes that are seen going on at the present day, so long as we remember that the periodic catastrophe is one of those processes. Those periodic catastrophes make more showing in the stratigraphical record than we have hitherto assumed.”


Even Charles Lyell thought that ordinary geological processes would cause Niagara Falls to move upstream to Lake Erie within 10,000 years, leading to catastrophic flooding of a large part of North America.


Unlike Lyell, modern geologists unfortunately do not apply uniformitarianism in the same way. They question if rates of processes were uniform through time and only those values measured during the history of geology are to be accepted.  "The present may not be a long enough key to penetrate the deep lock of the past"  (Ager, Derek V., 1993). Geologic processes may have been active at different rates in the past that humans have not observed. “By force of popularity, uniformity of rate has persisted to our present day. For more than a century, Lyell’s rhetoric conflating axiom with hypotheses has descended in unmodified form. Many geologists have been stifled by the belief that proper methodology includes an a priori commitment to gradual change, and by a preference for explaining large-scale phenomena as the concatenation of innumerable tiny changes.”


The current consensus is that Earth's history is a slow, gradual process punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants. In practice it is reduced from Lyell's conflation to simply the two philosophical assumptions. This is also known as the principle of geological actualism, which states that all past geological action was like all present geological action.

The Occult Phenomena & the Sciences - 1

Material for this post has been extensively drawn from the Wikipedia.


Any scientist who cares to take a first step in science and before doing science has to affirm in his own mental convictions the validity and existence of two methodological assumptions.

They are:
1. Uniformity of law across space and time: Natural laws are constant across space and time.

2.Uniformity of process across space and time.

The axiom of uniformity of law across time and space is necessary in order for scientists to extrapolate inductive inference into the unobservable past or even as predicatble tools for the future. As James Hutton wrote: “If the stone, for example, which fell today, were to rise again tomorrow, there would be an end of natural philosophy [i.e., science], our principles would fail, and we would no longer investigate the rules of nature from our observations.”  The constancy of natural laws must be assumed.  A phenomenon that occurs 'at this instant' is already a past event the next instant! Making inferences about the past and predicting the behaviour of the Universe in the future is wrapped up in the difference between studying the observable present and the unobservable past and future. In the observable present, induction can be regarded as self-corrective. That is to say, erroneous beliefs about the observable world can be proven wrong and corrected by other observations. This is Popper's principle of FALSIFIABILITY.

However, processes are observable only at any given instant by their very nature. Therefore, in order to come to conclusions about the validity of the observed event both for the past and its predictability for the future, we must assume the invariance of nature's laws.

 The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws amounts to a warrant for inductive inference which, as Francis Bacon showed nearly 400 years ago, is the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations.  Since the assumption is itself vindicated by induction, it can in no way “prove” the validity of induction.  G.G. Simpson in the year 1963 wrote "Uniformity is an unprovable postulate justified, or indeed required, on two grounds. First, nothing (?) in our incomplete but extensive knowledge of history disagrees with it. Second, only with this postulate is a rational interpretation of history possible, and we are justified in seeking—as scientists we must seek—such a rational interpretation".

As regards uniformity of processes across space and time - it implies that if a past phenomenon can be understood as the result of a process now acting in time and space, do not invent an extinct or unknown cause as its explanation.  We should try to explain events by causes now in operation without inventing extra, fancy, or unknown causes, however plausible in logic, if available processes suffice. This is known as the scientific principle of parsimony or Occam's Razor.

"Strict uniformitarianism may often be a guarantee against pseudo-scientific phantasies and loose conjectures, but it makes one easily forget that the principle of uniformity is not a law, not a rule established after comparison of facts, but a methodological principle, preceding the observation of facts ..." (Hooykaas, R. 1963)  It is the logical principle of parsimony of causes and of economy of scientific notions.

This is quite a useful tool actually since "... a limit is set to conjecture, for there is only one way in which two things are equal, but there are an infinity of ways in which they could be different."  (Hooykaas)

Stephen J. Gould simplified the issue, noting that Lyell's “uniformity of process” was also an assumption: “As such, it is another a priori methodological assumption shared by all scientists and not a statement about the empirical world".

If we understand this much, then there is hope that the possibility of existence of the occult and its amenability for being studied scientifically or in some other manner perhaps involving a slightly different approach, can be considered.

The dangers of hasty scientific assumptions and mistakenly set ways of thinking that hindered the proper understanding of natural processes can be appreciated by considering the 'Scablands Debate' of Washingon State, USA.  This will be dealt with in the next blog, but here I will breifly mention that there were two strands of thought in geology in the nineteenth century : The  'Theory of Uniformitarianism' and the 'Theory of Catastrophism'. By the 20th Century the former had gained widespread acceptance and had colonised the subconscious of most geologists.

These will be dealt with in the next blog posts.

Some Random Ruminations - 6 Gifts of Shirdi Sai Baba

I was interested to know of what the begging bowl that was presented to Shanthamma at the December's Homa Ceremonies  by Sai Baba was constituted. He had referred to it as Kapaala and told her that it was earlier with Shiva and that it later came to him which he presented it to Shanthamma. Shanthamma said that it was most probably the skull of some animal. I give another close-up photograph of the bowl alongside:

In addition to this begging bowl, a tiny pendant of Sai Baba and another tiny pendant of a Shiva Linga with a hooded snake perhaps made of silver was also in the bundle. The photograph is given alongside:

Every year, for the past five or six years, the members of our Bhajan Group proceed on some pilgrimage. In this effort we get to visit some out of the places that are not within easy reach of the common Bangalorean. In the year 2007 we visited Kuruvanthpura. In 2008 we visited Pithapuram. The year 2009 ended in a fiasco due to the Telengana riots in the vicinity of Hyderabad. In the year 2010 the group visited Ganagapura, Kudala Sangama, Badami, Aihole etc.

The past year in December 2011 we visited Nanded (Gurudwara established by the tenth guru Guru Gobind Singh) and later we proceeded to Karanja in Akola district of Maharshtra. This tiny town is the place where Shri Narasimha Saraswathi, the second Datta Avatar in Kali yuga, was born. By a phenomenal coincidence, when we were at that town, the birthday celebrations of the saint was held. Shri Narasimha Saraswathi gave a darshan to Shanthamma and donated a golden coin about the size and thickness of a Fifty Paise coin.

 This coin has 'Saraswathi' inscribed on one side and 'Sri Nusita Saraswathi' inscribed on the other. Both the letters are in Devanagari script as can be seen in the two photographs.  Shanthamma was told that it was the Saint's contribution, or more precisely, his 'Bhiksha' to the Kapaala or Begging Bowl.

While at the same place Karanja, Sai Baba again gave a darshan to Shanthamma and gifted her a bundle containing a pair of wooden padukas, a brass Kamandala (a vessel with a spout from which sanyasis drink water), an attractive creamy-white shell, a dark olive green well rounded polished elliptical semi-transparent pebble shaped stone (a linga? Saligrama?), cowrie shells etc. (See photo)

  

The shell (conch?) is generally used to perform 'Abhisheka' - a ritual bath of a linga. Two views of the conch are given here.

 A set of ten seashells which are called 'Kavade' in Kannada (Cowrie) and was traditionally used by children to play various games - even I remember playing them with my sister and neighbourhood children as a boy of seven or eight years - was also enclosed in a saffron bag. We haven't yet understood the importance of these gifts or what they are supposed to signify. Baba presented these items in a bundle on December 26th 2011 and advised her to retain it with her for a year and that he would tell her to whom the items should be gifted.

Among other presents of Shirdi Sai Baba to Shanthamma are 1) A silver One rupee coin with the year 1889 on it.

2) A Half Franc coin of France (1970) and a ten paise Indian coin of 1989 and a five paise coin of 1985. There was also a coin of copper but the imprints on it were not very clear. These coins materialised at the Homa and Annadana celebrations at Bangalore.

3) A beautiful polished dark green pebble which some call Saligrama and is considered sacred by the Hindus was also presented by Baba at Karanja.

One possible interpretation (I got this inspiration on 10th October 2012) that a person can give for the gift of cowrie shells (Kavade in Kannada) is that Baba wanted to draw attention to the ancient children's game of Moksha Pata (Lesson of Moksha) which could be played with cowrie shells.

It may even be Baba's intention to draw the attention of  us all that life is like the game of Moksh Pata or 'Snakes and Ladders' with the lesson that both 'virtues' and 'vices' that a person has in one's life may be determined by chance as in the children's game where the outcome is determined by probabalities of the outcome of a throw of dice or kavades. So one need not be inordinately proud to be a 'virtuous man' or inordinately be critical of himself if he thinks he has committed a lot of sins and is a sinner. I add that all these are my interpretations.

The board game, today called Snakes and Ladders, originated in ancient India, where it was known by the name Mokshapat or Moksha Patamu meaning the 'Lesson to Moksha'. It's not exactly known when or who invented it, though it's believed the game was played at a time as early as 2nd century BC. According to some historians, the game was invented by Saint Gyandev in the 13th century AD. Originally, the game was used as a part of moral instruction to children. The squares in which ladders start were each supposed to stand for a virtue, and those housing the head of a snake were supposed to stand for an evil. The snakes outnumbered the ladders in the original Hindu game. The game was transported to England by the colonial rulers in the latter part of the 19th century, with some modifications. My wife tells me that in one version of the game, after one reaches the 'Final Square' he then proceeds by steps of one square at a time to reach the end of the game. In these squares by which he proceeds one at a time, there are neither snakes nor ladders. Perhaps it means that one would have reached some sort of 'God Realisation' and performs actions where neither virtues nor vices of those actions stick to him. In other words, he neither views himself as 'virtuous' nor as a 'vice man'. The modified game was named Snakes and Ladders and stripped of its moral and religious aspects and the number of ladders and snakes were equalized.

XXX 

Some Random Ruminations - 5

The phenomena that I have observed around Shanthamma do not seem to be reproducible. She doesn't seem to have entire conscious control over what happens, and I notice that, very often, she too seems curious to know the contents of a bundle that appears in her hand. In materialising small figurines she seems to partly will it, yet even there she does not seem to have control over what appears.

In my efforts to relate these incidents to my friends, the majority of whom are profoundly sceptical of these things, I seem to encounter a solid wall that prevents me from arousing adequate interest in these matters. Many of them believe these to be the work of a 'magician' or a 'trickster' who uses methods of optical and other illusions to produce an effect of these things materialising, but these objects do not actually materialise but are made to appear so by trickery.

For a person like me and several others who have been intimately associated with Shanthamma, we are convinced that there is no trickery involved but that these objects genuinely materialise. What convinces us of her honesty are the transparency of her expression; her body language; the circumstances of her life and the plain open way in which she discusses these things. Quite often people around her would have noticed just two or three seconds earlier that she would be empty handed but the next moment she would be in possession of a fairly large bundle that would have been impossible for her to conceal. Most of the sceptics would say that such things are impossible and do not fit into the modern scientific world-view.

As a somewhat feeble response I copy and paste with requisite modifications the comments of some thinkers that I found in Wikipedia under the heading of 'Scientism':


1.Scientism refers to a belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

2. The totalizing view of science is as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things. I stress this to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.

3. People who idolize science and its methods are also guilty of border-crossing violations in which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. The word Scientism has been used for any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews).  Philosopher of religion Keith Ward has said scientism is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting, as the truth of the statements "no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically (or logically)" or "no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true" cannot themselves be proven scientifically, logically, or empirically.

4. E. F. Schumacher in his ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn’t be counted, in other words, it didn’t count."

5. In his essay, ‘Against Method’, Paul Feyerabend characterizes science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise"  and argues emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly over "dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within a distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. He depicts the process of contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination, aimed at "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules.

6. “Science can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and ... non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so ... Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science... In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality”.
                                     — Feyerabend, Against Method, p.viii

I draw upon these statements of intellectuals only to highlight that these remarks may be profoundly true and meaningful especially after my experiences with Shanthamma and Shirdi Sai Baba and various phenomena that seem quite inexplicable. Partially in humour I propose the term 'Gap Positivism' in my theorizations of these phenomena because, while logical positivism insists that knowledge is derivable either from mathematical or logical deductions and empirical observations that depend on sensory perceptions, these phenomena that always seem to happen pointedly and specifically only when one is not observing, yet happening in a manner so as to preclude the possibility of fraud, the term 'Sensory Gap' seems the most fitting!

Some Random Ruminations 4 - The gap between knowledge & wisdom

Material for this post has been lifted almost word for word from 'Continental Philosophy' by Simon Critchley.

The relation between knowledge and wisdom or between scientific enquiry and humanistic enquiry and the consequent 'meaning of life' is not reducible to empirical investigation. The gap between knowledge and wisdom is not an exploratory gap that can be filled by producing a better more comprehensive theory but is a FELT GAP.

The scientific conception of the world does not close the gap between knowledge and wisdom but rather is felt more acutely. Even when the basic exegencies of life are comprehensively met, as in the developed western world - when every man has been provided with enough food, even more food than they can eat; when you shower them with every earthly blessing Man concocts new neuroses and new pathologies and new sciences are created to deal with them (psychiatry & psychoanalysis). The question of meaning of life returns with frightening vengeance.

Attempts to fill this 'meaning gap' can be undertaken by the unjustified means of 'returning to traditional religion' or through invention of a new religion or by the 57 varieties of ways of doing it which are available in the supermarket of esotericism that could include astrology, yoga, sitting under a pyramid holding crystals or whatever. These constitute varieties of obscurantism and causes man to become a lunatic. Contrariwise, an infatuation with science and its methods leads to an equally dangerous scientism which reduces man to a beast. In John Stuart Mill's words the one doctrine is accused of making men beasts, the other lunatics.

This is precisely the point where some of the predelictions of ancient western philosophy is admirable, in the sense that there was an attempted integration of knowledge and wisdom. It was widely believed that a knowledge of how things were the way they were, would  lead to wisdom in the conduct of one's life.

The assumption that ties knowledge and wisdom together is the idea that the cosmos as such expresses a human purpose, and therefore a knowledge of nature would be part and parcel of what it means to be human. (Teleological view of the universe). Here each natural thing can be explained in terms of its final cause (Aristotle) - that goal for which a thing is the way it is. This view provided a felicitous unity of theory and practice, of knowledge and wisdom, of causal explanation and existential understanding or meaning.

With tremendous advances in science, this unity has been split apart. To quote Rene Descartes 'the customary search for final causes is utterly useless in physics'. The universe expresses no human purpose. It is simply governed by physical laws which are indifferent to human striving. The universe is vast, cold, inhuman and mechanical. Blaise Pascal writing in the late 1650s said 'the eternal silence of infinite spaces fills me with dread'. That is, knowledge of the infinite, open universe of Copernicus and Galileo, without meaning or final purpose, inspires sheer anxiety when one turns to the question of wisdom.

This is one expression of the historical and spiritual experience that is known as 'Enlightenment' : we are left with an experiential gap between the realms of knowledge and wisdom, truth and meaning, theory and practice, causal explanation and existential understanding. The scientific revolution in its undeniable truth, produced a disenchantment of nature.

It is in such a stage of things that the leela's of Shirdi Sai Baba comes to assume great value. Mankind had almost concluded that "Nature is no longer the visible expression of some 'world soul'." To highlight what Simon Critchley says "Nature is sheer, impersonal objective 'stuff', which is law governed, causally explicable, but completely cut adrift from human intentions". The question is: can nature or indeed human selves become re-enchanted in such a way that reduces or even eliminates the meaning gap and produces some plausible conception of a good life?

By the miracles that are happening in the name of Sai Baba, attention is being drawn to what sort of life he led while he was living and what sort of life he would prescribe for others. These curious incidents also draw one's attention to read the Sai Sat Charita to find out what style of living could enable him to develop these Siddhis (powers?). The occurrence of such miracles  infuse a fresh meaning to a world depleted of all meaning by an essentially empirical and rationalistic world.

To elaborate the above point further, a majority of modern scientific minded humans are almost convinced, or have profound doubts about the possible existence of the Divine. Such people have begun to question the sanctity of human values. When the existence of the Divine was more or less assured among humans, certain ethical values seemed to be affirmed by it. With the gradual erosion of faith there has been a concomitant devaluation of values. With  the loss of values, human life has been stripped of much meaning. The vast scales of industrialisation and modernisation accompanied by the urbanisation of human population and dense concentration in large cities together with the nature of work that is largely mechanical has led to a devastating dehumanisation of man. Science and technology has caused a strong feeling of alienation and estrangement. To me at least, and perhaps to many others like me, the occurrence of such occult phenomena seems to infuse more meaning to the universe around me.

Shirdi Sai Baba essentially led a life of utter simplicty. He inhabited a mosque but encouraged religious motifs that were, in many instances, those of Hinduism. His conduct was eclectic. He always had 'Allah Malik' on his  lips and should anyone approach him loaded with problems, he would bless them with the words "Allah bhala karega" (God will bestow well-being). He tried to unify and in some ways integrate the Hindu and Islamic experiences. While a few miracles were recorded during his lifetime, he was by no means a miracle-monger while living. Though people had noticed certain siddhi powers at various instances, he never seems to have made a show of it. He always begged for food with a begging bowl and lived a simple, frugal lifestyle. Even as he seems to have passed to the beyond, he seems to favour a simple frugal lifestyle judging by the fact that he materialised a begging bowl which he says is 'Kapaala' and presented it to Shanthamma at this year's (2011) annual austerities saying '... this begging bowl was with Shiva earlier and it later came to my possession which I am handing over to you'. Perhaps he was implying that there is dignity to be seen in frugality and abstinence. "There is kingship in poverty" as he frequently used to explain while he was living.