Category Archives: Conscious Evolution

The Illuminate Film Festival will span five days and three venues, and will present 25 of the most compelling conscious themed films of the year. There will be evening spotlights, post-screening presentations with directors and producers, Reel Healing immersions, musical performances, a virtual reality showcase, and a Healing Lounge.

Illuminate Film Festival, the premier festival dedicated to elevating and empowering humanity through transformational cinema, is holding its 4th annual event May 31 - June 4th in the spectacular red rocks of Sedona. Illuminate brings people together to experience life-altering shifts through inspirations films.

Illuminate spans five days and three venues, and will present 25 of the most compelling conscious themed films of the year. There will be evening spotlights, post-screening presentations with directors and producers, Reel Healing immersions, musical performances, a virtual reality showcase, and a Healing Lounge. The Festival opens with the free-to-the-public Launch Party and Outdoor Screening on May 31st and will throw nightly parties for passholders every night of the festival.

In addition, the Festival will host a series of film industry programs - the Conscious Film Convergence, the Conscious Cinema Summit and the Conscious Cinema Accelerator - which offer workshops, networking and mentoring for those working to elevate consciousness through filmmaking.

The Festival will present its second annual Conscious Visionary Award to conscious evolution pioneer Barbara Marx Hubbard and offer a special evening with filmmaker, author, musician and peace troubadour James Twyman. In conjunction with a spotlight world premiere of HEAL, a deeply empowering documentary about our miraculous ability to heal ourselves, special guests Joe Dispenza and Anita Moorjani will share their timeless wisdom.

This years film lineup includes a special focus on spiritual movements and the influential leaders that sparked global awakening and self-realization. Some of the films in this section include:

The Last Dalai Lama? - Director, Mickey Lemie (Ram Dass Fierce Grace) brings to the big screen a very powerful and intimate portrait of an extraordinary individual. Lemie was able to film extensively with the Dalai Lama with an intimacy only made possible by their 30-year relationship. The Dalai Lama speaks candidly about the issues that come with aging that can disquiet the mind: regrets, unfulfilled dreams, frustrations, the inevitability of death, and his next incarnation. (Southwest Premiere)

Walk With Me - With unprecedented access, Walk With Me goes deep inside a Zen Buddhist community who practice the art of mindfulness with their world-famous teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Filmed over three years in their Plum Village monastery in rural France and on the road in the USA, this visceral film is a meditation on a community grappling with existential questions and the everyday routine of monastic life. Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch (Southwest Premiere)

Shadows of Paradise This film documents the Transcendental Meditation Movement with intimate access to two of TM s leaders iconic filmmaker David Lynch and dedicated disciple Bobby Roth. The film documents the movements metamorphosis following the death of founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Having grown up within TM, Director Sebastian Lange approaches his subject through an introspective lens, seeking to reconcile the present-day incarnation with the teachings and practices that have shaped his worldview. (Southwest Premiere)

Music and the role it has played in expanding world consciousness will be highlighted in several musical spotlight programs featuring performances, concerts and kirtans. Films include:

MANTRA Sounds into Silence shares the stories of people who are finding healing and a sense of inner peace by singing mantras together. Its a film about people reconnecting with their true selves and with others. Through encounters with a variety of characters, we discover how Deva Premal & Miten, Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Snatam Kaur and MC Yogi came to this music themselves and to the practice of Kirtan*, and how, over the years, it transformed their lives. (World Premiere)

The Golden Age is a tour de force musical film inspired by true events about subversive pop star Maya OMalley. After a string of incendiary remarks in the press, Maya gets dropped from his music label, and sets out on a spiritual pilgrimage to immerse himself in the vast teachings of Hindu mythology, in an attempt to resolve his troubled past. Set against a dreamy backdrop of his compelling songs, the film shifts between the present day, and performances and interviews from his past, as it reveals Mayas tumultuous journey towards spiritual redemption (US Premiere)

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World will tell the story of a profound, essential, and, until now, missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. This deeply insightful film cements how some of our most treasured artists - Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, Buffy Sainte-Marie,Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo, and others - found their inspiration in ancient, native melodies and harmonies that were infused with a desire to resist. Youll never listen to your favorite rock and roll classics the same way again.

Major sponsors include: Natural Action Technologies, Chocolatree, Science of Mind Magazine, Collective Evolution, The Collective, Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village, Sedona Real, and The Lodge at Sedona.

ILLUMINATE Film Festival, the worlds premier film festival for conscious cinema will be held May 31-June 4, 2017 at the Sedona Performing Arts Center, the Mary D. Fisher Theater and The Collective.

Original post:
Sedona to host 4th annual Illuminate Film Festival - Verde Independent

RISING STAR: The Making of Barack Obama

By David J. Garrow.

William Morrow. 1,460 pp. $45.

Of the books that journalists and historians have written on the life of Barack Obama, three stand out so far. In Barack Obama: The Story, David Maraniss shows us who Obama is. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg explains how Obama thinks. In The Bridge, David Remnick tells us what Obama means.

Now, in a probing new biography, Rising Star, David J. Garrow attempts to do all that, but also something more: He tells us how Obama lived, and explores the calculations he made in the decades leading up to his winning the presidency. Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence; who believed early on that he was fated for greatness; and who made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal that must have seemed unlikely to everyone but him. Every step whether his foray into community organizing, Harvard Law School, even the choice of whom to love was not just about living a life but about fulfilling a destiny.

It is in the personal realm that Garrows account is particularly revealing. He shares for the first time the story of a woman Obama lived with and loved in Chicago, in the years before he met Michelle, and whom he asked to marry him. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, now a professor at Oberlin College, is a recurring presence in Rising Star, and her pained, drawn-out relationship with Obama informs both his will to rise in politics and the trade-offs he deems necessary to do so. Garrow, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., concludes this massive new work with a damning verdict on Obamas determination: While the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.

***

By now the broad contours of the Obama story are well known, not least because Obama has repeated them so often. With Kansas and Kenya in his veins, he carries Indonesia in his memory, Hawaii in his smile, Harvard in his brain and, most of all, Chicago in his soul. It wasnt until I moved to Chicago and became a community organizer that I think I really grew into myself in terms of my identity, he said in an interview about Dreams From My Father, his 1995 memoir. I connected in a very direct way with the African American community in Chicago and was able to walk away with a sense of self-understanding and empowerment.

Note how it was as much about Obama himself as any success he had in his organizing work. Inspired by Harold Washington, the citys first black mayor, Obama began to discuss his political ambitions with a few colleagues and friends during his early time in the city. He wanted to be mayor of Chicago. Or a U.S. senator. Or governor of Illinois. Or perhaps he would enter the ministry. Or, as he confided to very few, such as Jager, he would become president of the United States. Lofty stuff for a 20-something community organizer who struggled to write fiction on the side.

Jager, who in Dreams From My Father was virtually written out, compressed into a single character along with two prior Obama girlfriends, may have evoked something of Obamas distant mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Like Dunham, Jager studied anthropology, and while Dunham focused on Indonesia, Jager developed a deep expertise in the Korean Peninsula. Jager was of Dutch and Japanese ancestry, fitting the multicultural world Obama was only starting to leave behind. They were a natural fit. Jager soon came to realize, she told Garrow, that Obama had a deep-seated need to be loved and admired.

During his public life, President Barack Obama has often turned to his personal story as a touchstone to relate to the public. Here are four moments that stand out. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

She describes their life together as an isolating experience, an island unto ourselves in which Obama would compartmentalize his work and home life. She did not meet Jeremiah Wright, the pastor with a growing influence on Obama, and they rarely saw his professional colleagues socially. The friends they saw were often graduate students at the University of Chicago, where Sheila was pursuing her doctorate. They traveled together to meet her family as well as his. Soon they began speaking of marriage.

In the winter of 86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him, she told Garrow. Her parents were opposed, less for any racial reasons (Barack came across to them like a white, middle-class kid, a close family friend said) than for concern about Obamas professional prospects, and because her mother thought Sheila, two years Obamas junior, was too young. Not yet, Sheila told Barack. But they stayed together.

In early 1987, when Obama was 25, she sensed a change. He became. . . so very ambitious very suddenly, she told Garrow. I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president.

The sense of destiny is not unusual among those who become president. (See Clinton, Bill.) But it created complications. Obama believed that he had a calling, Garrow writes, and in his case it was coupled with a heightened awareness that to pursue it he had to fully identify as African American.

[The racial procrastination of Barack Obama]

Maranisss 2012 biography deftly describes Obamas conscious evolution from a multicultural, internationalist self-perception toward a distinctly African American one, and Garrow puts this transition into an explicitly political context. For black politicians in Chicago, he writes, a non-African-American spouse could be a liability. He cites the example of Richard H. Newhouse Jr., a legendary African American state senator in Illinois, who was married to a white woman and endured whispers that he talks black but sleeps white. And Carol Moseley Braun, who during the 1990s served Illinois as the first female African American U.S. senator and whose ex-husband was white, admitted that an interracial marriage really restricts your political options.

Discussions of race and politics suddenly overwhelmed Sheila and Baracks relationship. The marriage discussions dragged on and on, but now they were clouded by Obamas torment over this central issue of his life . . . race and identity, Sheila recalls. The resolution of his black identity was directly linked to his decision to pursue a political career, she said.

In Garrows telling, Obama made emotional judgments on political grounds. A close mutual friend of the couple recalls Obama explaining that the lines are very clearly drawn. ... If I am going out with a white woman, I have no standing here. And friends remember an awkward gathering at a summer house, where Obama and Jager engaged in a loud, messy fight on the subject for an entire afternoon. (Thats wrong! Thats wrong! Thats not a reason, they heard Sheila yell from their guest room, their arguments punctuated by bouts of makeup sex.) Obama cared for her, Garrow writes, yet he felt trapped between the woman he loved and the destiny he knew was his.

Just days before he would depart for Harvard Law School and when the relationship was already coming apart Obama asked her to come with him and get married, mostly, I think, out of a sense of desperation over our eventual parting and not in any real faith in our future, Sheila explained to Garrow. At the time, she was heading to Seoul for dissertation research, and she resented his assumption she would automatically postpone her career for his. More arguments ensued, and each went their way, although not for good.

***

At Harvard, the Obama the world has come to know took clearer form. In his late 20s now and slightly older than most classmates, he had a compulsion to orate in class and summarize other peoples arguments for them. In law school the only thing I would have voted for Obama to do would have been to shut up, one student told Garrow. Classmates created a Obamanometer, ranking how pretentious someones remarks are in class.

[A literary guide to hating Barack Obama]

Such complaints aside, he was generally admired, including by his professors, one of whom wrote a final exam question around comments Obama had made in class. And his elevation to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, the first time for an African American, signaled the respect the schools elite students had for him even if some liberal classmates later regretted their choice, finding Obama too conciliatory toward conservatives in their midst. Garrow re-creates the drama around the election, with Law Review colleagues debating the candidates legal acumen and leadership skills, as well as the possible history-making aspect of the selection. It is an unexpectedly riveting part of the book. The black editors on the staff began crying and running and hugging when the final choice was made and with the national news coverage that followed, Obamas star was on the rise.

Law school also provided Obama one of his most important intellectual interlocutors: classmate and economist Rob Fisher. They took multiple classes together and co-wrote a never-published book on public policy, titled Transformative Politics or Promises of Democracy: Hopeful Critiques of American Ideology. The manuscript explored the political failures of the left and right and expounded on markets, race and democratic dialogue, showing glimmers of the political philosophy and rhetoric that Obama would come to embrace. A few years later, Fisher helped Obama rethink Dreams From My Father (originally titled Journeys in Black and White), making it less a policy book and more a personal one.

Obama had met Michelle Robinson at the Chicago law firm where she worked and where he was a summer associate after his first year of law school, and the couple quickly became serious. However, Jager, who soon arrived at Harvard on a teaching fellowship, was not entirely out of his life.

Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-91 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Baracks relationship with Michelle Robinson, Garrow writes. (I always felt bad about it, Sheila told the author more than two decades later. Once Barack and Michelle were married, his personal ties to Sheila was reduced to the occasional letter (such as after the 9/11 attacks) and phone call (when he reached out to ask whether a biographer had contacted her).

If Garrow is correct in concluding that Obamas romantic choices were influenced by his political ambitions, it is no small irony that Michelle Obama became one of those most skeptical about Obamas political prospects, and most dubious about his will to rise. She constantly discourages his efforts toward elective office and resents the time he spends away from her and their two young daughters. Obama vented to a friend how often Michelle would talk about money. Why dont you go out and get a good job? Youre a lawyer you can make all the money we need, she would tell him, as the couple struggled with student loans and the demands of family and political life. (Garrow sides with Michelle, highlighting how, on the day after Sasha was born, Barack went downtown for a meeting.)

[The self-referential presidency of Barack Obama]

As he considered a U.S. Senate bid, Obamas team commissioned a poll that covered, among other questions, his name. Barry, as he was known from childhood into his early college years, polled better than Barack, but Obama never considered resurrecting the old name. He had made his choice, of identity and image, long ago. Sheila recalls that one of the few times Obama became genuinely angry with her was in Hawaii, when she heard relatives calling him Barry, and she did so as well, just for fun. He became irrationally furious, she said. He told me that under no circumstances was I ever to use that name with him.

There was no going back.

***

Rising Star is exhaustive, but only occasionally exhausting. Garrow zooms his lens out far, for instance when he recounts the evisceration of Chicagos steel industry in the early 1980s, providing useful context for Obamas subsequent work. And he goes deliciously small-bore, too, delving into the culture of the Illinois statehouse, where poker was intense and infidelity was rampant. Theres a lot of people who fed in Springfield, a female lobbyist tells Garrow. What else is there to do? Obama, however, did not. Michelle would kick my butt, he told a colleague there. At times Garrow delivers information simply because he has it; I did not need a detailed readout of all of Obamas course evaluations from his years teaching at the University of Chicagos law school. (Turns out his students liked him.)

The books title seems chosen with a sense of irony. Garrow shows how media organizations invariably described Obama as a rising star, in almost self-fulfilling fashion. Yet, after nine years of research and reporting, Garrow does not appear too impressed by his subject, even if he recognizes Obamas historical importance.

The author is harsh but persuasive in his reading of Dreams From My Father, for instance, calling it not a memoir but a work of historical fiction, one in which the most important composite character was the narrator himself. (Reviewers were impressed by it, but few who knew Obama well seemed to recognize the man in its pages.) He points out that Obamas cocaine use extended into his post-college years, longer than Obama had previously acknowledged. And he suggests Obama deployed religion for political purposes; while campaigning for the U.S. Senate, Garrow notes, Obama began toting around a Bible and exhibited a greater religious faith than close acquaintances had ever previously sensed.

Throughout the book, Obama displays an almost petulant dissatisfaction with each step he took to reach the Oval Office. Community organizing is not ambitious enough, he decides, so he goes to law school. But then he moves into politics because I saw the law as being inadequate to the task of achieving social change, Obama explains. In Springfield, he is again disillusioned by the realization that politics is a business . . . an activity thats designed to advance ones career, accumulate resources and help ones friends, as opposed to a mission.And upon reaching the U.S. Senate, he tells National Journal that he is surprised by the lack of deliberation in the worlds greatest deliberative body. Nothing measures up.

Rising Star concludes with Obama announcing his presidential campaign, and Garrow speeds through the Obama presidency in a clunky and tacky epilogue, in which he recaps the growing media disenchantment with Obama and goes out of his way to cite unfavorable reviews of earlier Obama biographies. (Come on, David. Other books can be good.) In his acknowledgments, Garrow says that Obama granted him eight hours of off-the-record conversations and even read the bulk of the manuscript. His understandable remaining disagreements some strong indeed with multiple characterizations and interpretations contained herein do not lessen my deep thankfulness for his appreciation of the scholarly seriousness with which I have pursued this project, Garrow writes.

That is Obama now: a scholarly project, a figure of history. After the eight years of his presidency, it is odd to consider him in the past tense. Yes, he remains a public figure, as the mini-controversy over his speaking fees shows, and he is not going away, and certainly not with a post-presidential memoir still coming. But now he is fighting for history and legacy, and one of those battles is against another figure whose ascent is even more bizarre, yet perhaps no less personally preordained.

Obama had considered Donald Trump long before either man won the presidency, and brushed off his existence as a misguided national fantasy. Americans have a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, Obama wrote in the old Harvard book manuscript, now more than 25 years old. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I dont make it, my children will.

Follow Carlos Lozada on Twitter and read his latest reviews, including:

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Original post:
Before Michelle, Barack Obama asked another woman to marry him. Then politics got in the way. - Washington Post

In 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, and the world caught its breath.

This pivotal event deeply impacted the young Barbara Marx Hubbard, who found herself asking President Eisenhower, "What is the meaning of our power that is good"? Barbara's 40+ year inquiry, and the answers she has found, offer invaluable assistance to us all at this time in our history. Despite the state of the world, we are truly on the threshold of great possibility, of our own conscious evolution.

There is no doubt in my mind that Barbara Marx Hubbard who helped introduce the concept of futurism to society is the best informed human now alive regarding futurism and the foresights it has produced.~Buckminster Fuller

Barbara Marx Hubbard has been called "the voice for conscious evolution..." by Deepak Chopra. She is the subject of Neale Donald Walschs book The Mother of Invention. And many would agree she is the global ambassador for conscious change.

At her heart, Barbara Marx Hubbard is a visionary, a social innovator.She is an evolutionary thinker who believes that global change happens when we work collectively and selflessly for the greater good. She realizes that the lessons of evolution teach us that problems are evolutionary drivers, and crises precede transformation, giving a new way of seeing and responding to our global situation.

As a prolific author and educator, Barbara has written seven books on social and planetary evolution. She has produced, hosted, and contributed to countless documentaries seen by millions of people around the world. In conjunction with the Shift Network, Barbara co-produced the worldwide "Birth 2012" multi-media event that was seen as a historic turning point in exposing the social, spiritual, scientific, and technological potential in humanity.

In 1984 her name was placed in nomination for the Vice Presidency of the United States on the Democratic ticket, calling for a "Peace Room" to scan for, map, connect and communicate what is working in America and the world. She also co-chaired a number of Soviet-American Citizen Summits, introducing a new concept called "SYNCON" to foster synergistic convergence with opposing groups. In addition she co-founded the World Future Society, and the Association for Global New Thought.

Barbara Marx Hubbard is not an idealist, nor does she believe that social and planetary change is simple. But she does believe that humanity has the tools, fortitude, and resolve to take the leap towards conscious evolution.

Her books include: The Hunger of Eve: One Womans Odyssey toward the Future; The Evolutionary Journey: Your Guide to a Positive Future; Revelation: Our Crisis is a Birth An Evolutionary Interpretation of the New Testament; Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of our Social Potential; Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence; 52 Codes for Conscious Self Evolution and Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanitys Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution.

"Barbara Hubbard, the Head of the Foundation has been in a life time service for the advancement of the human condition and the inner quality of life of our communities and the society. As a pioneer of evolutionary inquiry, she has devoted her lifework and the work of her Foundation to the advancement of Conscious Evolution, and to programs that enable and empower individuals and communities to develop evolutionary competence so that they can create their desired future. She has made significant contributions to the cause of Conscious Evolution as an author, a public speaker, and evolutionary agent. She is one of the leaders of the recently established Alliance for the Advancement of Conscious Evolution. "The Foundation has designed and developed a remarkable set of programs, providing a comprehensive approach to evolutionary service. The program offers: the development of evolutionary knowledge base, a world-wide Internet-based program for the development of evolutionary competence, (called "Gateway"), a community-based evolutionary design program, and a weekly Internet Radio program which offers the insights of scholars and practitioners of on conscious evolution." Bela H. Banathy

The mission of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution is a call to action from one of the truly great visionaries of our time. Breathtaking in scope and stunning in insight, the Foundation is providing a blueprint for the reconstruction of human reality so bold and yet so completely right, as to ignite the deepest sense within us that we can, and we must, join in this cocreation now. Neale Donald Walsch

Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution are giving us an extraordinary guide and the tools and technology to effect desperately needed changes, and indeed the healing of our society and planet. If enough people are exposed to her works, something phenomenal will emerge as a consequence. Marianne Williamson

Originally posted here:
Barbara Marx Hubbard | Futurist, Author, Public Speaker

Science and Christ
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Science_and_Christ.pdf

Christianity and Evolution
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Christianity_and_Evolution.pdf

Let Me Explain
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Let_Me_Explain.pdf

The Phenomenon of Man
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/phenomenon-of-man.pdf

The Future of Man
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Future_of_Man.pdf

Toward the Future
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Toward_the_Future.pdf

Heart of Matter
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Heart_of_Matter.pdf

The Divine Milieu
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/The_Divine_Milieu.pdf

Writings in Time of War
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Writings_in_Time_of_War.pdf

Human Energy
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Human_Energy.pdf

Hymn of the Universe
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Hymn_of_the_Universe.pdf

Man's Place in Nature
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Mans_Place_in_Nature.pdf

On Love and Happiness
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/on_love_happiness.pdf

Vision of the Past
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Vision_of_the_Past.pdf

The Making of a Mind
https://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism/pdfs/Teilhard_de_Chardin_Pierre_-_The_Making_of_a_Mind.pdf

MADISON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The International Forum on Consciousness, Conscious Evolution: Awakening Through the Senses will be held May 1819, 2017, in Madison, Wisconsin. A mix of presenters will both discuss and guide experiences using the five (or more) senses to provide insight on how this might impact our understanding of self, community, and our place on this planet. The forum will explore how altering our awareness of sensorial inputs might create a change in our awareness of all aspects of reality and expand consciousness in positive directions for ourselves and others.

WHAT:

WHEN:

WHERE:

REGISTRATION:

The International Forum on Consciousness is open to the general public but limited to 300 participants. Registration is $250 and there are a limited number of scholarships available to assist with the cost. Forum registrants also have the opportunity to join a presenter for a small group discussion over dinner on Thursday evening, May 18 for an additional $85. For more information or to register, visit: https://www.btci.org/consciousness/.

CONFIRMED PRESENTERS:

About the BTC Institute

The BTC Institute is a not-for-profit organization operated exclusively for educational, scientific and cultural purposes. Learn more about its K12 programs, scientific course offerings, and annual educational forums and symposia at http://www.btci.org/.

Read the original here:
International Forum on Consciousness - Business Wire (press release)

Skill to discriminate The Hindu ... is analysed and by the process of differentiation the non-dual reality of Brahman is established. The entire created universe with names and forms is shown to be the manifestation of Brahman. It is a conscious evolution of Brahman's will and desire ...

See the original post:
Skill to discriminate - The Hindu

Indias prime minister Narendra Modi urged people to embrace the age-old practice of yoga, saying that rejecting an idea because it is ancient could be potentially harmful.

Yoga is constantly evolving, the prime minister said as he unveiled a 112-foot statue of Adiyogi, Lord Shiva, on the occasion of Mahashivratri at the Isha foundation in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu last Friday (24).

As a tribute to Adiyogi, Modi lit the sacred fire to commence the Maha Yoga Yagna across the world. He urged one million people to take an oath to teach a simple form of yoga to at least 100 other people each over the course of the following 12 months, so that 100 million additional people practised yoga by Mahashivratri next year.

Yoga is ancient yet modern, constant yet evolving, but the essence of yoga has not changed. It is important to preserve this essence, Modi said.

A brainchild of spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev Sadhguru, the statue showcases Shivas contribution as Adiyogi.

It is essential that the next generations of people on this planet are seekers, not believers. As philosophies, ideology, belief systems that dont stand the test of logic and the scientific verification will naturally collapse in coming decades, you will see the longing for liberation will rise. When that longing rises, Adiyogi and the science of yoga will become very important, Sadhguru said.

During his visit to the Isha Foundation ashram, Modi took part in the Pancha Bhuta Aradhana, a yogic process of cleansing. He also visited the shrines of Dhyanalinga and the Linga Bhairavi.

The tallest bust of its kind, the height of Adiyogis face is symbolic of the 112 possibilities he explored for human beings to reach their ultimate potential, besides scientifically representing the 112 chakras of the human system.

Sadhguru said: For the first time in the history of humanity, Adiyogi introduced the idea that the simple laws of nature are not permanent restrictions. If one is willing to strive, one can go beyond all limitations and attain liberation, moving humanity from assumed stagnation to conscious evolution.

But, it also has a scientific significance there are 112 chakras in the human system, with which you can work, to explore 112 dimensions of life. In pursuit of the divine, you dont have to look up because it is not somewhere else. Each of the 112 possibilities is a method to experience the divine within you. You just have to pick one.

The statue was designed by Sadhguru over a period of two and a half years, and built over the next eight months by the foundations in-house team. Sadhguru also expressed a desire to place similar statues of Adiyogi in the other three corners of the country.

Excerpts from Modis speech

Maha-Shivratri symbolises a union of divinity with a purpose, of overcoming darkness and injustice.

It inspires us to be courageous and fight for good. It marks the shift of seasons, from the cold to the lively spring and brightness.

From Somnath to Vishwanath, from Kedarnath to Rameshwaram and from Kashi to Coimbatore where we have gathered, Lord Shiva is everywhere.

Standing here before this 112-feet face of Adiyogi and the Yogeshwar Linga, we are experiencing a colossal presence enveloping everyone in this space.

In the times to come, the place where we have gathered is going to be a source of inspiration for all, a place to immerse ones self and discover truth.

Today, yoga has come a long way. This is the beauty of yoga it is ancient, yet modern, it is constant, yet evolving. The essence of yoga has not changed.

Yoga is the catalytic agent, ushering the transformation from Jiva to Shiva.

By practising yoga, a spirit of oneness is created oneness of the mind, body and the intellect. Oneness with our families, with the society we live in, with fellow humans, with all the birds, animals and trees with whom we share our beautiful planet this is yoga.

Yoga is the journey from me to we. Today, the whole world wants peace, not just peace from wars and conflict but peace of the mind. The burden of stress takes a heavy toll and one of the sharpest weapons to overcome stress is yoga.

There is ample evidence practising yoga helps combat stress and chronic conditions. If the body is a temple of the mind, yoga creates a beautiful temple.

That is why I call yoga a passport to health assurance. More than being a cure to ailments, it is a means to wellness.

Yoga is about Rog Mukti (freedom from diseases) as well as Bhog Mukti (desisting from worldly greed). Yoga makes the individual a better person in thought, action, knowledge and devotion.

It would be very unfair to see Yoga only as a set of exercises that keeps the body fit. You may see people twist and turn their bodies but they are not all yogis.

Yoga is far beyond physical exercises. Through Yoga, we will create a new yuga a yuga of togetherness and harmony.

The coming together of so many nations to mark the International Day of Yoga illustrates the real essence of yogatogetherness. Yoga has the potential to herald in a new yuga (a new era) a yuga of peace, compassion, brotherhood and allround progress of the human race.

Read more from the original source:
Modi supports yoga at Lord Shiva bust unveiling - Easterneye (press release) (subscription)

COIMBATORE: Calling people to embrace the age-old practice of Yoga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said rejecting an idea because it is ancient could be "potentially harmful".

The Prime Minister, who recently unveiled a 112-foot statue of Adiyogi, Lord Shiva, on the occasion of Mahashivratri at the Isha foundation here, said Yoga is constantly evolving.

As a tribute to Adiyogi, he lit the sacred fire to commence the Maha Yoga Yagna across the world, under which he said,"1 million people will take an oath to teach a simple form of yoga to at least 100 people each in the coming year, and touch at least 100 million people before the next Mahashivaratri".

"Yoga is ancient yet modern, constant yet evolving, but the essence of yoga has not changed. It is important to preserve this essence," Modi said.

A brainchild of spiritual leader Jaggi Vasudev Sadhguru, the statue showcases Shiva's contribution as Adiyogi.

"It is essential that the next generations of people on this planet are seekers, not believers. As philosophies, ideology, belief systems that don't stand the test of logic and the scientific verification will naturally collapse in coming decades, you will see the longing for liberation will rise. When that longing rises, Adiyogi and the science of Yoga will become very important," Sadhguru said.

The Prime Minister also took stock of the sprawling precincts of the Isha Foundation's ashram, as he visited the 22-feet underground water body at the Suryakund that aims at the physical cleansing and balancing of the human body.

He participated in the Pancha Bhuta Aradhana by Sadhguru - a yogic process of cleansing the five elements of the human system - at the Dhyanalinga, a multi religious meditation shrine, followed by a visit to the Linga Bhairavi, a feminine shrine for physical, material and spiritual wellbeing.

The tallest bust of its kind, the height of Adiyogi's face is symbolic of the 112 possibilities he explored for human beings to reach their ultimate potential, besides scientifically representing the 112 chakras of the human system.

"For the first time in the history of humanity, Adiyogi introduced the idea that the simple laws of nature are not permanent restrictions. If one is willing to strive, one can go beyond all limitations and attain liberation, moving humanity from assumed stagnation to conscious evolution.

"But, it also has a scientific significance -- there are 112 chakras in the human system, with which you can work, to explore 112 dimensions of life. In pursuit of the divine, you don't have to look up because it is not somewhere else. Each of the 112 possibilities is a method to experience the divine within you. You just have to pick one," Sadhguru said.

The statue was designed by Sadhguru over a period of two-and-a-half years, and built over the next eight months by the foundation's in-house team, right in time for celebrating Shivratri.

Sadhguru also expressed a desire to place similar statues of Adiyogi in the other three corners of the country, "The eastern one will most likely be in Varanasi. For the north, it will be somewhere north of Delhi and for the western one, will be in Mumbai."

Originally posted here:
Important to preserve the essence of yoga: PM Narendra Modi - Economic Times

The tallest bust of its kind, the height of Adiyogis face

The tallest bust of its kind, the height of Adiyogis face is symbolic of the 112 possibilities he explored for human beings to reach their ultimate potential, besides scientifically representing the 112 chakras of the human system.

"For the first time in the history of humanity, Adiyogi introduced the idea that the simple laws of nature are not permanent restrictions. If one is willing to strive, one can go beyond all limitations and attain liberation, moving humanity from assumed stagnation to conscious evolution.

"But, it also has a scientific significance -- there are 112 chakras in the human system, with which you can work, to explore 112 dimensions of life. In pursuit of the divine, you dont have to look up because it is not somewhere else. Each of the 112 possibilities is a method to experience the divine within you. You just have to pick one," Sadhguru said.

The statue was designed by Sadhguru over a period of two-and-a-half years, and built over the next eight months by the foundations in-house team, right in time for celebrating Shivratri.

Sadhguru also expressed a desire to place similar statues of Adiyogi in the other three corners of the country, "The eastern one will most likely be in Varanasi. For the north, it will be somewhere north of Delhi and for the western one, will be in Mumbai." PTI TRS DIP BK MG

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Coimbatore: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday unveiled a 112-foottall statue of Lord Shiva here on the occasion of Maha Shivaratri.

The bust of Lord Shiva has been installed at the premises of Isha Foundation and dedicated to its founder Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

Addressing the gathering, PM Modi said, 'Maha Shivratri' symbolises a union of divinity with a purpose of overcoming darkness and injustice.

He also said, India has given the gift of Yoga to the world and bypractisingYoga, a spirit of oneness is created.

Also Read:PM Narendra Modi's gift on Maha Shivaratari: A 112-foot face of Lord Shiva - Read details

"Today whole world wants peace, not only from wars and conflicts but peace from stress, and for that we have Yoga.

"Rejecting an idea just because its ancient, can be potentially harmful," Modisaid.

A tight security was put in place for the PM's visit which coincided with a planned protests by tribal groups and political parties.

They alleged that the idol has been built on encroached land. The Left parties had asked the PM to keep away from the venue.

"This iconic face symbolises liberation, representing the 112 ways in which one can attain the ultimate through the science of yoga," the Foundation had earlier said in a statement.

PM Modi, who inaugurated the statue at 6.30 pm, also lit a sacred fire to mark the start of 'Maha Yoga Yagna' across the world when one million people would take theoath to teach yoga to others.

"For the first time in the history of humanity, Adiyogi introduced the idea that the simple laws of nature are not permanent restrictions.

If one is willing to strive, one can go beyond all limitations and attain liberation, moving humanity from assumed stagnation to conscious evolution," Sadhguru Vasudev had said.

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PM Modi unveils 112-foot tall bust of Lord Shiva in Coimbatore - Zee News