• Views of Others
• Mahadevan Views in Hand ☥

Views of Others

Humanism and Rats

Dorothy Maclean, one of the originators of the Findhorn Community in northwest Scotland, once was troubled by rats. She laughingly recount that as the fledgling community grew, the compost piles were neglected and they got rats. The rats would chatter and scratch away at night under Dorothy's caravan, keeping her awake. After three nights without sleep, she got desperate and thumped the floor vigorously from her bed and heard brief skeltering noises followed by silence until she was just about to fall asleep. Then the scratching under her bed was renewed, she thumped the floor again, but in the end was left wide awake.

After three nights she was bleary-eyed and ready to try to talk to the rats. She tuned to the rats and explained that she needed sleep, that she couldn't function without it. So if they had to make a noise, would they please make it during the day.

There was silence and she slept. The next night there were some passing scratching noises and she again appealed to the good nature of the rats -

After that she heard no more rat noises and forgot the incident. She remained in the annex four more years afterwards, before moving into another caravan. Then another group member, Eddie, moved in. In the morning he came to her, wild eyed, saying that rats had kept him awake all night and had been trying to get at him.

Dorothy did not manage to evoke love for rats in Eddie and others. Eddie stayed there a very short time. In the end, poison was put down and the rats killed, for the community feared a visit from the Sanitary Inspector. Dorothy: "I was not strong enough either to cancel out or change the negative attitude of other people to rats . . . even the thought of cooperating with such a universally condemned creature is difficult . . . But I know . . . that rats are gentlemen."

(Maclean 2008, 79-81, passim)

Thanks for the Cow

"A cow must not be killed," is a verdict of the Markandeya Purana (Pargiter 1904, 592). (4).

Vegetarians can get problems and challenges once they have set foot on the path of consideration in some wider perspective.

A meadow in spring and summer may get you on that track - that flowers are delicate, and like it best if they are not cut off the plant in their prime.

Personal responsibility may boil down to this: seek the food with the least suffering linked to it.

Competing for Dwindling Resources

There is competition in the orchard too: At slow speed the plants are competing for food and light among themselves.

If you establish an orchard, maybe the deer that is hunted no more, becomes your competitor, and "eats the fruits of your garden." That could be the time when you find a good fence comes in handy. Who knows?

~ೞ⬯ೞ~

Mahadevan Views in Hand ☼

1. Experience of God transcends many definitions

Cosmic can mean "of the universe", "in the universe", or, to put it more academically: "of or relating to the cosmos, the extraterrestrial vastness, or the universe in contrast to the earth alone; characterized by greatness especially in extent, intensity, or comprehensiveness" [Merriam-Webster].

If you have wronged someone, hurry to pay back, for the payback interest might grow.

It is better to be alerted than unsuspectingly falling victim to deceivers eager for money, power, and influence worldwide.

Sound moral development (1) reveals the extent to which a person has achieved control over his or her inner life; (2) ensures that he or she lives in harmony with the all right natural and social world; (3) correlates with his or her progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. [Wikipedia, s.v. "Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development"]

And while we "dance and juggle" along that road of reaping and sowing and reckoning and balancing out things, maybe we find time and means to develop too.

2. Experiences that are hard to define, easily breed wrong or limping notions

"It takes one to know one (Saying)."

1. How do you feel?

There is an undying atman (soul, spirit) deep in man, say many scriptures in the Upanishadic tradition.

Mahadevan holds that "Brahman (God) cannot be defined." Brahman/Atman can be hinted at, suggestively, figuratively, though.

Refrain from much ado about it and live well. (Radhakrishnan 1956. 169, 173. (7)(#1.1)

So

Your inmost being is perhaps hard to define, but may be experienced - that is the ancient teaching. Also: "The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the merchants a merchant. [With Emerson]"