Looking back on the "pandemic" - Part 1

 

Points to ponder: 

"Gain of function" research did happen , and it is happening all over the world. Gain of function is euphemism for biological warfare.

US funds bio warfare labs, several hundreds of them, around the world. It has to be in places where they can exercise control with pliable regimes,   and it has to have  plausible deniability. Ukraine had several such labs.

Bill Gates bought into vaccine manufacturers and spoke of "being prepared" for a "pandemic" years back.

SARS / Avian Flu , a small version of what happened now, happened decades back.

Fauci has survived six presidents. He has close links with the Pharma lobby.

WHO is clueless about  medicine, and about science.

Breathing is one of the fundamental processes of living. Any obstruction to free breathing will cause long term health damage, both physiological and psychological. No one talks about that.

Masks impede breathing.

The virus was supposed to be surface borne, and people were told not to touch any "surfaces" . Then people were told it is airborne. All kinds of measures were proposed which are ineffective.

When the virus is smaller than most air particles, by definition, if you can avoid it, you are actually not breathing. By definition, you are dead. 

Equating day to day living with conditions in an operating theatre , for proposing measures like sanitiser and masking, is highly stupid logic, for various reasons. 

The stories keep changing, the narrative keeps morphing. But what is constant is that people are told to wear masks , be distanced. The only result is that it creates a  long term sustained state of panic.

A long term sustained state of panic is good for keeping the population enslaved, and for controlling their minds.

There is no evidence that masks are effective. But everyone has been forced to accept it, and repeat it as a mantra.

Vaccines are full of toxic ingredients, each one of which is a heavy poison in its own right. No one talks about that 

Everytime you take a vaccine , you cause some long term damage to your body. 

The body has evolved defence mechanisms to fight "germs" as part of its evolution.

Any solution like a vaccine, will not address the problem holistically, like the body's immune system does. 

Any vaccine is for a specific variant of a specific virus. There are trillions of viruses out there and they keep mutating all the time. 

No one wants to acknowledge all that.

Equating every flu virus with small pox and polio is highly stupid logic, for many different reasons. 

Lockdowns have not been effective. They never will be. But the powers that be want to impose lockdowns. 

Data on covid deaths have been inflated in various different ways. 

Data on deaths due to adverse events of vaccination have been suppressed in various different ways. 

There are many adverse events of the covid vaccine.  They include sudden  cardiac seizure, hair fall, hearing loss, and a host of other things. No one reports that or talks about that. 

Companies like Pfizer indulge in outright fraud, suppress data and information, seed false propaganda, and are focused only on profit.

We believe companies like Pfizer. Or we believe organisations, like WHO and medical lobbies, who are controlled by companies like Pfizer.

A lot of prescriptions to "fight" the pandemic go against  natural laws. If we go against natural laws, we will always pay the  price. 

A lot of what passes for scientific research in medicine are outright lies.

A lot of what passes for medicine is an outright lie.  

( TO BE CONTINUED)

KASHMIR DIARY PART 2

 

( link to Part 1:    https://www.dineshgopalan.com/2022/05/kashmir-diary.html )

 

In many ways Kashmir is still in the middle ages. Ninety-nine percent of the population being Muslim, all business establishments are run by men, and  any work outside the house is done only by men. Women can be seen outside and move around freely, but you will not see any woman without a scarf covering her head. The full Burqa is rare but you can see one in ten women wearing it.  When it comes to dress, it is not just the women of course. In line with what Islam prescribes, men – even little boys – are always covered fully, with only the palms and soles of the feet exposed. Apparently, the people themselves wish to be conservative in their dressing habits.

 

There are no theatres in the whole of Kashmir. Except for the tourists, and those who accompany them, you are unlikely to find too many people outside after 7 pm. Apparently, the people do not like night life of any kind.

 

There is only one liquor shop in the whole of Kashmir, somewhere in Srinagar. When we were there, it was Ramzan time, so the shop was obviously closed for the entire month. Apparently, the people being very pious, do not ever wish to drink.

 

There is no public transport worth the name. We hardly saw any buses except in a couple of places. Inter-city travel seems to be a rarity. Apparently, the people are so happy being where they are that they do not want to go anywhere.

 

There is hardly any industry, which of course may be a good thing in Paradise, but it means that there are no employment opportunities, except in tourism.

 

Now, for the flip side. Education is given huge priority, and schools are well organised. There actually seems to be some education going on in the government schools even in far-flung areas, which is a situation quite different from most other places in the country. Almost everyone we met, including villagers who it is apparent have not stepped out much, spoke passable English.

 

It is considered desirable for girls to go to school and many parents would send their children, including girls, for higher studies if they could. At the home stay where we were staying in Aru, the daughter who is eighteen has aspirations of getting into the civil service. And her mother was beaming encouragement at her. The people are very proud that one of the Rafale pilots is a Kashmiri girl.

 

The road system is not very well developed in terms of connectivity. It almost seems like all roads lead to Shrinagar, and even to go the next district, you need to go via Shrinagar. A lot of it has to do with the terrain of course. Railway has not yet reached Kashmir; it is currently snaking its way up from Jammu at a much-delayed pace.

 

Tourists are coming in in droves, possibly due to a unique combination of reasons. The post-covid revenge travel boom, the reluctance to travel internationally yet, and the effect of the movie Kashmir Files which has brought the state into the limelight. We heard Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali at several places, and they do not come singly, they come in busloads.

 

The economy is heavily dependent on tourism. The locals are invariably very well-behaved with the tourists, and why not, no one will want to kill the goose which gives the golden eggs.

 

So much has been said about the scenic beauty of Kashmir that it does not bear repetition.

 

What we have here is an idyllic paradise stuck in the last century, with a population steeped in a sense of their own virtue, living in a cocoon which has to burst. And burst it will. Such an influx of tourists from all over India will expose them more than they would like to outside influences. And such an emphasis on educating their girls, while at the same time keeping them confined in various ways, will soon result in contradictions that they will find difficult to handle.

 

The men are going to be busy attending to the tourists, for which education is not important. At least, not the conventional kind of education. The women are going to hit the books with a vengeance since they are allowed to do nothing else, and all of them will be harbouring dreams of escaping the prison that is their home. To us, it may be an idyllic paradise, but I can imagine seeds of rebellion brewing in me if I am confined to a cage in any version of paradise.

 

Within a couple of decades from now, the women would have outstripped the men, and many would have flown the coop. They will take up white-collar jobs in other states and leave. The whole population, which already has DTH TV beamed into their homes, is going to become restive. The tourists who are being encouraged into every street, and into every home in the name of home-stay will bring in great disruptive influences.

 

The Chinese concept of Yin and Yang has a very interesting template for this phenomenon. Everything always swings between the extremes, and at any point in time there is more Yin or more Yang, there is never a perfect balance. But, when things go too far in one direction, the seed of its opposite, which lies dormant within itself, starts growing and things start swinging in the other direction.

 

The very conservatism, of which the Kashmiris are so proud, will breed the seeds of liberalism, and they will see the destruction of a lot of what they have held on to, within the next two generations or so.

 

Whether that is a good thing, or a bad thing, is debatable. But it is inevitable. It will be interesting to watch it unfold. 

KASHMIR DIARY

A ten-day holiday in Kashmir at the fag end of spring before the onset of the peak summer season – wife and I visited Kashmir for the first time, from 20^th to 30^th April.  A few notes based on what we experienced first-hand…

 

The first thing that strikes you when you are travelling from the airport to Srinagar is the number of armed military / paramilitary personnel along the road. Every 50 metres there is a person with an AK-47, standing guard over the civilian population going about their business. CRPF/BSF/ Army are everywhere; they move around in convoys under heavy protection, even routine movement of personnel is in fully armoured vehicles. About one in fifteen people resident in Kashmir now is a military overseer.

 

Shrinagar is like any other city, with its share of hustlers, touts, and tourist-traps. It is however, much more understated, orderly and clean than other Indian cities – it reminds you of a European city.  It has the Dal Lake, several beautiful gardens, and it has a bustling old city where we enjoyed walking around.

 

The cab from the airport to the city costs 1000 rupees for a distance of 16 km. If that sounds high, it is, and it is also in line with general cab rates in Kashmir. Except in the busy parts of Shrinagar city where there are some autos, Kashmir as a whole does not have hail-down cabs, Ubers, Olas, public buses or any other form of transport except private-hire yellow-board cars. We always believe in hiring an Innova for the entire length of any trip, and in any case here you don't have any other choice. However, compared to Uttaranchal, Ladakh and West Bengal, where we have toured in the mountains, there are some differences here. First, the cabs are much more expensive. Second, it is not possible to use your cab to tour any of the "spots" in and around any town that you stop in – you have to hire a local cab for that, again at exorbitant rates. For a ten-day trip in Uttaranchal we would probably pay 45,000 to keep an Innova with driver with us at all times, at our beck and call. In Kashmir, expect to pay 60,000 or so, and spend another 25000 or 30000 on cabs to tour within each town that you visit.

 

The hotels are not great for the price – value for money is something that you should not be worried about if you are visiting here. For a hotel with the same facilities as you get in any other Himalayan destination, expect to pay roughly double.

 

It is not even full-season yet, and tourists have descended in droves. There is no accommodation available and hotel rates are being pumped up further. Come May, it will be worse. And even worse, the Amarnath Yatra starts a month from now, which will add thousands more to the number of tourists.

 

We landed at Shrinagar, and headed out the next day to Aru Valley, 16 km from Pahalgam. We were quite happy to give Pahalgam a miss – a beautiful place quite overrun with tourists. If you are staying at Pahalgam be prepared to pay premium prices to go to places where hundreds of others are jostling with you for a look at the scenery. Aru, where we were, is out of the way and much better in that respect. We were at a quaint small home-stay called Rohella Guest House. We went to Simthan Top, about a hundred kilometres from there, a day trip. It is a must-do trip, about the same distance even if done from Shrinagar. Wonderful views on the way, and when we reached the top, it was actually snowing. As it usually happens in India, right on top of the pass, there was a tent with a chaiwallah serving chai and Maggi. I don't touch the stuff, but Maggi is inescapable wherever you go.

 

From Aru, we landed at Sonamarg where we had one full day. Seeing the crowd, we wanted to escape; Sonamarg is incredibly kitschy in its touristiness. We didn't want to sign up for the obligatory pony ride to take the obligatory sled on the local glacier. So, on our driver's suggestion, we headed out to Naranag. That was the best decision of the entire trip. Naranag is the starting point for the Kashmir Great Lakes trek, and we did trek to a place called Dumail, a confluence of two rivers ('do' + 'milan' = dumail), a distance of about 5 km. The trek is worth doing, the entire route is like it is out of a picture-book, with a river running throughout by your side, and pine-covered mountains and snow-capped peaks in sight. In fact, the entire Kashmir Great Lakes trek is a must-do, from whatever I hear – it is six days of similar terrain in which you trek.

 

 

From Sonamarg, we headed to Gurez Valley, a remote back-of-the-beyond destination, on the LOC with Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. Again, a wonderful journey, and a great place to stay, though only for a day. Beyond a day, there is nothing to do there.

 

From there to Shrinagar, where we spent some time exploring the old city around Jama Masjid; checked the prices for a Shikara ride on Dal lake and decided that the experience was not worth it; and visited one of the gardens for which Shrinagar is justly famous. We never bothered to include Gulmarg on our itinerary and are glad we didn't, since other travellers reported experiences like standing in the queue for two hours just to take the obligatory Gondola ride!

 

The people of Kashmir are wonderful, warm, and genuinely hospitable. One question I get asked frequently from my friends and acquaintances is whether Kashmir is safe. Kashmir is not just safe, it is ultra-safe, even for solo women travellers, and always was, even during the height of the terrorist problem. At no place do you get any feeling of discomfort, and you can be assured of help from the locals wherever you go.

 

The scenic beauty of Kashmir is undeniable. The beauty here is very different from, say, a Himachal, or an Uttarakhand.  However, you are in a kind of a peculiar situation here. The places with facilities where you won't feel bored, are too touristy, and the places which are out of the way lack the facilities which most tourists are accustomed to. And the prices, both of hotels, and of transport, are definitely not what one can term as value for money.

 

The trip to Shrinagar Airport to take the flight out was a memorably bad experience. The security measures, coupled with lack of basic things like trolleys, make it quite a nasty experience for passengers.

 

We have been to several Himalayan destinations so far including Ladakh, Sikkim, Uttaranchal and West Bengal. Kashmir is no doubt very scenic and beautiful, but every one of these other places is equally beautiful. And they have much more to see and do, are much bigger in size and scope, and are more friendly on the pocket too. Except if you are coming here to do a trek – I intend to come back to do the Kashmir Great Lakes trek – it is an overhyped destination.  Many and varied are the places you can visit, even if you consider only the Himalayas; and many of those places are worth considering over Kashmir.

 

What is Yoga

Slowing down the breath ,

Increasing exhalation:inhation to 2:1 when not exerting yourself,

Letting go of thoughts, being a witness to your thoughts, silencing that voice in the head,

Relaxing, letting go, un-tensing all muscles,

All of this is Yoga, and all of this is a pre-requisite to Yoga.

 

Keeping the mind in a non agitated state, by giving up negative attitudes like envy, lust and greed, and cultivating positive attitudes like compassion, love, and forgiveness is Yoga. This is not something you can ever be perfect in, it should rather be seen as the direction in which one should take the mind. 

The above is not something you just "do" and forget about, it is something you do to integrate into your life, that is Yoga.

Putting the body in certain  positions, asanas, that increase the flow of Prana, vital energy, in a constant state of relaxation ( except the specific muscles being tensed in the pose) , is  Hatha Yoga, which people refer to as Yoga nowadays.

People divorce  the practice of asana from the mind and the beareth,  and don't bother  about the pre-requisites. In that case, it merely becomes another form of physical exercise , not without benefit, but it will not enable the practitioner to progress further.

Asana is merely the third step in the eight step Ashtanga Yoga outlined by Patanjali. Its side effect is good health and vitality but that is not the goal. 

 Any person of any age can do Yoga. 

The goal of Yoga is much loftier than mere attainment of bodily health, which is an almost guaranteed outcome of regular asana practice.  The goal of Yoga is to attain union of the individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness, and asanas are  practised to make the body ready for more advanced practices.

Once the body has  been rendered free of ailments, and has been made flexible and pliant with asana practise, is when one goes to the next step, Pranayama. In case one jumps into advanced  Pranayama practice without laying the foundations, it may result in more harm than good. Basic breathing exercises are fine, but advanced practices are ruled out. Most of us do not even know how to breathe, and we talk of Pranayama, it is necessary for most people nowadays to attend classes to learn how to breathe.

Where the breath goes, energy follows. The practice of Pranayama is actually the practice of "yama, control" of the "prana, energy" , which is the vital energy that flows through our nadis, invisible channels or pathways that carry energy through the body.

That takes care of the Annamaya Kosha and the Pranamaya Kosha, the Gross Body sheath and the next higher sheath of the Energy Body. 

Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, are the first four steps of the eight steps of Patanjali, and it is Bahiranga Yoga, the outwardly focused Yoga 

Then starts Antaranga Yoga, Internally focused Yoga, the process of bringing the mind under control. Meditation is not truly possible unless one puts the gross body and energy body in a state to be ready for it. Meditation is also not possible unless one learns to be truly, truly, relaxed. 

For a person who is truly relaxed, ideas and inspiration strike the mind effortlessly, said Cicero, the ancient Roman philosopher. Relaxation is essential for true well being.

Antaranga Yoga has four steps, starting with Pratyahara, withdrawal of the mind from sense objects. 

Then follows Dharana, concentration , where the mind is steadily focused on one single thought, to the exclusion of all else, just like oil poured from one  jug to another, flows in a continuous stream. It is almost impossible for the mind to be brought under such control even for a few minutes, and the meditation practices are all aimed at focusing the mind on a single thought.

From "single thought" to thoughtlessness or meditation, or silence,  is a process that automatically has to happen, just like sleep automatically happens, you can never "do" sleep. Dhyan is the seventh step of Patanjali's eight steps.

Then comes Samadhi , union with the Supreme, a state which is difficult to reach. A few in every age, the Sages, manage to reach such a state. Patanjali even goes on to describe different types of Samadhi!

The above is the path of Raja Yoga. The Gita mentions other Yogas as well, which can serve equally well for attaining the same state of Union. They are Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Jnana Yoga. Depending on individual temperament, it is for us to choose which path to take.

The paths are not mutually exclusive. Working  without worrying about the results as in Karma yoga, having an attitude of Bhakti as in Bhakti Yoga, and sifting the real from the unreal as in Jnana Yoga, are all necessary things to do, to a greater or lesser degree.

As the Masters have stated,  the aim is the Mountaintop,  and many paths lead to the same place. Once you reach the top it does not matter which path you took. 

Reaching the top of the Mountain is Yoga, and  travelling up any of the paths is also Yoga. Union of the body, mind and spirit is Yoga.

Passion

Show me what or who you love,

And I know your true nature,

What your life revolves around,

Is what you truly experience!

The beloved casts a shadow,

That lights up all things around,

Everything takes on a glow,

An intensity newfound!

What we experience as life,

Is what we turn the mind towards,

Where the mind is turned defines,

Each by each, our entire life!

Passion colours all we see,

Vividly in passion's hue,

Life is not the same again,

Passion always extracts its due!