Sound Grumbles – The Gold Scales

Remaining young at heart holds many promises of developments. At times it works well to "think outside the box" too.

Jolly and mild humour and fun can help us along in life.

The fine things about giants, trolls, sirens and other appearances in folklore - if not dreams - is that they entertain and often embody lessons on handling this and that.

Women don't have souls, but are souls, just like wise and good men.

The easy life may require much work to get to it in the first place, and then much work to maintain it, protect it, and so on.

There are also terrible follies to steer out of and never succumb to.

Preparing and designing for old age is quite an art too. Those who think they can start for it when they are old, have misconstrued quite a lot. A joke: "If you start preparing for old age in good time and old age never comes to you, try not to get frustrated" - for you lose your connections, first loves, and so on and on, and could need to adapt to new ways better than a grumbler. It could pay to think positively - do it!

Gruffly odious guys and executioners are rarely blithe. And if you get understood by a lot of people, have you thought and expressed yourself deep enough if the majority of men is mediocre? Don't make it a problem - just find your level and keep it up if you can. Then you too can be tall enough to like, "This Self of mine within the heart, is smaller than a barley seed, yet greater than the earth, greater than the interminable space, greater than the heaven, greater than the worlds" (Chandogya Upanishad III. 14. 3). It is a paradox.

Those who are bald and shiver if their feet get cold and wet, may not like the rules of Yogananda for his more or less self-supporting colonies. Although he seems to promise a lovely world to followers, you may not be in it. "The follower died, and the world was thought to have become better."

For those who are dead, a gold bangle on each corpse will not help the ones who had left "their buildings" - and how may wearing gold, silver and other expensive metals otherwise avert troubles for the living? It is a great tradition that is hinted at here.

If you study the life of Krishna, or a baron, also consider whether you have got what it takes to live like them.

It often helps to have read the texts first, not the glamour and hype surrounding them or anchored in them. For example, the guru Yogananda claimed he had been Arjuna - that is polyandric, warring, and given a vision. Is there a saddening follow-up? Yes. Or: Is there fit evidence? Hardly.

One way of imposing on another lies in giving him or her blunt advice that is unasked for. Going on and harvest publicity on top of that again, looks rather impertinent.

The last chapter tells of something almost too strange - how man and woman were created equal in the likeness of God and blessed in one place, and how woman was created from a rib of man in another place. There are well over a hundred paradoxes in the Bible, and some are worse than others.