I love to put my thoughts into words which, in some way uplift, inspire and encourage the philosopher and the poet within each of us. In this journey of life, each of us experience our experiences in our own unique way and plays our thoughts to our own music as we go through this emotional dance of life.
Many of my writings are Pravachans (Spiritual Sermons) many of which are on YouTube. Many are poetry which can be found which can be found at The Poetry Garden on this site and some are below.
May we all listen to the ever-present philosopher and the whispering poet within ourselves, and be motivated to find the time to set it free, and as we do, discover our own truths within.
(Please leave your suggestions for improvement or comments at the bottom of this page)
The Things We Do To Appease The Gods!
The things we do to appease the Gods! The things we do to appease our God!
The sacrifices we make!
The names we give to things, places and people to remind us of God!
The trees we plant in the name of God – then we go and cut down dozens of them for selfish or financial reasons.
The monuments we build in God’s name – then we go and worship these monuments diligently for the rest of our lives.
The directions we follow from those who are supposed to be our leaders, and those who we are told, interpret ‘The Word of God’!
The rituals we do and traditions we follow!
The things we commit to, all of these in an effort to appease the Gods!
Yet how do we know when we succeed, and how do we know when we fail, and what can we do about it?
These Gods or God, which so many of us have not as yet identified, or try to understand!
Who is it that we call God?
Where is he? And what is our relationship with that God?
Some still believe that this God lives in that special place called Heaven and that he looks down upon us and checks up on us, every so often!
Many of us reverently believe that we are the sheep and he is the Shepard. So many of us see it as a slave master relationship, in which we are all the lowly slaves and he is the demanding Master! Demanding that we worship him incessantly and constantly, and if we do not, that we will suffer everlasting doom and gloom!
Many of us see God as a grantor of wishes, so we perform the sacrifices, fasting, annual religious services, Sunday worships, even sacrificing another life, and so many other questionable things. Then we expect this God to grant us our wishes.
The things we do to appease God!
So many of us dedicate a lifetime of doing, of saying, of somehow convincing ourselves that the world needs saving from the demons and the devil, and then proclaim ourselves to be that savior of the world. But, in saving the world O God, you the grantor of wishes will have to grant me my wishes.
So many of us do not understand the idea, the concept of selflessness! We do not understand the concept of ‘I AM’; the truth in that, the Divinity is already within us! That we are all children of that one God and that he already exists in every single one of us. That we are all extensions of that God!
We do not understand that God is not the grantor of wishes! But that we are the ones who are in control and will determine whether our wishes will come to fruition. We do not understand that when we do a sacrifice, that we do not do it to appease a dictator called God, but we do it to teach ourselves discipline and to awaken the God already dwelling within us!
Some of us perform our religious services for others selfishly, when it is supposed to be selfless in its entirety! It is not supposed to be a way of life! Not a service for which we get paid handsomely! But unfortunately, we now live in a world where some of the leaders of churches and charities are millionaires!
The things we do to appease the Gods!
The things we do!
The wars we fight and millions of people we kill because we refuse to acknowledge the fact that there is, but one God!
The excuses we make!
The tears we cry, and the tears we make others cry, all in the name of God!
The curses we throw at others who do worship our God or do not abide by our God’s wishes!
The egos we seek to pacify, and the terrible actions we perform to pacify that always-hungry ego!
The time and energy we expend to prove that our God is greater than another person’s God, ignoring the fact that there is but one God, known by many thousands of names.
All of these to appease our God!
But we fail to realize that we, as children of God have the inherent ability to show universal Love …. God-like love!
That we have the ability to exhibit selfless behavior …. God-like behavior!
We fail to acknowledge that we all have unlimited potential …. God-like potential!
And we refuse to understand and acknowledge that our destiny truly is in our own hands.
We are all Gods unto ourselves but yet, the things we do to appease the Gods …. someplace else!
Jag B Mahadeo
The Intrigue Of Time – A Personal Exploration
Written in 2010 by Jag B Mahadeo
Time!
It intrigues us! It fascinates us! It scares and intimidates us. It is the most important and valuable commodity which we have. We are all given the same amount each day. We cannot save it and regardless of how much we love them; we cannot lend any of our time to others. We certainly may wish for more, but we will not get any more of it. When we lose it, misuse it or use it unwisely, then there is no way that we can get it back or make up for the blunder in the future!
Time!
It speeds up when we are enjoying ourselves and having ‘fun’, and slows down to a patience-testing crawl when we are in misery and trouble, which leads to the often used phrase that our lives ‘flash before our eyes’ in mere seconds in a near death experience. One of our most brilliant scientists ever, Albert Einstein said it best. He said something to the effect that if you are holding hands with your loved one for an hour, it seems like a minute and if you put your hand over the open flame of a stove for a minute, it seems like an hour.
Some of us try to outsmart time by doing things such as setting the clock ten minutes ahead so we won’t be late for work. When the paint on the house fades with the effect of time, we try to freshen it up with another cover of paint. Some of us try to do the same on our bodies with cosmetics and even use plastic surgery to try and disguise the adverse effects of time. It even seems that in a twist of mercy, time gradually fades our memory on purpose as we age, to prevent us from feeling bitterness when we compare our time of youth of our lives to the present moment in time.
Time!
We celebrate it. It makes us extremely happy on some occasions, makes us downtrodden and sad on others and it is definitely, never enough. Some of us waste a lot of our time by sleeping too much, much, much more that our body needs. Many of us waste a good slice of it being mesmerized by the new-fangled television, sitting in front of the TV for many hours on end, or on one of those online games where we escape reality by immersing ourselves in a far-off fantasy life, while our own priceless and irreplaceable sand run out in our own hourglass. Some we have nicknamed ‘couch-potatoes’ throw themselves at the mercy of the TV, watching whatever the device wants to show them, even if there is nothing that they like, and many of us waste a lot of our precious time ‘socializing’ and browsing on the internet, with no sense or feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day.
Yet when it comes to doing some of the more important things in life, like spending time with our families, meditating, our daily prayers, or exercising the gift of this human body, we complain to anyone who would listen, that we do not have the time. We blame time; yet fail to consider that the most accomplished of us, from the great prophets, scientists, great Gurus and teachers, all have had the same amount of time in their day as we do. Only twenty four hours a day. They did not have twenty five hours. They had the same twenty four hours as the rest of us, but they went on to accomplish great things.
Now, imagine that you have $100.00 dollars in your pocket and you are going to the grocery store to buy much-needed food for the family, and on the way there, you pass by a store which displayed a gorgeous jacket in the front window. You’ve always wanted this jacket, so you go into the store and buy the jacket with the $100.00 and you go home happy, for the moment. But now you and your family go hungry. You have spent the money on a jacket and then you complain to the world that you have no money for food. Many of us do this with time. We have a limited amount of time, like the limited hundred dollars, but we make the unwise choice, waste it, and then complain that we so not have enough time.
Time!
It intrigues us! It fascinates us! It scares and intimidates us. Yet, it is at the center of the essence of our very existence. I’ve often wondered! Is it that time is laid out as in a time-scape, as opposed to a landscape, and we are, as the often-used phrase suggests, traveling through time? Or is it that we are living and existing, and that time is passing us by, leaving us suffering its’ insidious effects.
Time!
I’m in awe of time and try to watch every TV show which discusses time, and even though it is at the center of my existence, I do not fully understand it, in fact, I barely do! In so many ways it is still a mystery and leaves many of our perpetual questions still, and seemingly forever, unanswered. We find so many ways to measure and divide time. We take a life of it, we call it a lifetime, and then we divide it up into years. Then we take the years and divide it up into months. We keep dividing our time into ever smaller increments of weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds and even micro-seconds.
We effectively create what I think of as these tiny blocks of time which we fill with the rewards and consequences of our actions, the result of which we call happiness or unhappiness. In addition to our present actions, we also fill these blocks of time with the results of our past actions which bear fruit in our present circumstances. Yet we are lightning-quick to lay the sharp blade of blame on friends, relatives, mother and father for what we have become and what befalls us in our lives.
Over the past eons, it is still, as it has been; that the most important fact about time is how we make use of the amount of it which is allotted to each one of us, and the order of importance in which we place health, wealth, spirituality, family, work, friends, and all the other pieces of our lives which makes up our day of time, and eventually our life of time. Our Lifetime!
Om, Shanti. Om Shanti. Om Shanti. (Peace to everyone)
Jag B Mahadeo
The Intrigue of Time – Part 2
Written in 2013 by Jag B Mahadeo
And my fascination with time continues…
Over the course of human history, I cannot help but wonder at the thousands, and possibly, millions of minds who have tried and struggled to wrap their thoughts around the concept and experience of time. There is, in my mind, that part of me who is still a teenager and I have lost count of the number of times when I have looked across my living room at my children in wide-eyed amazement, wondering exactly where did the time go, almost like I have not yet made peace with the fact that yes, time has moved on, and I am now a father of grown children?
The idea that our measurement and understanding of time is totally based on the revolution of the earth and its orbit around the sun, seems so simple, but sometimes leaves me fantasizing about the possibility of far-away planets where the differences in rotation and orbit will create wonderful, extra-long days for me, the space traveler to enjoy. Oh, the beautiful dreams of endless amounts of glorious time at my leisure! But one can only dream!
It confounds me to observe that it seems that majority of people have taken time in stride, almost taken it for granted, and seeming so satisfied with just letting one day follow the last, and let it replace the previous day without getting caught up in the why, where, how, and what of the whole idea of time. It seems that it a concept which we should not waste any of our limited and precious time thinking about? If this is so, then I am guilty of wasting quite a bit of my own time on this apparently unanswerable dilemma, although I must confess that I enjoy immensely, the act of getting my mind lost into this delightful chaos of thoughts about time and its special intrigue.
Should I compare one moment of time in my life to another? If we do this, is this perplexing comparison fair? Or should we confine our time which has passed to just the bits of videos tucked away in the miracle of the memory banks inside of our heads… in our minds? Is there anything to gain from doing such comparisons or do we just torture ourselves by recalling the sad, unsavory memories? There is certainly a great deal of pleasure in replaying these mind videos of the joyous moments of our past, so much so that some people waste their present gift of time in a kind of self-fulfilling fantasyland, their memories stuck in the past, playing in a loop over, and over, and over. Then they have a difficult time dealing with the reality of their lives and may eventually seek professional help to overcome this hurdle.
Is there any truth to the idea or concept of Karma? If there is, then our past actions remains as formidable monuments to which our futures are inevitably tied, and recalling these past actions as lessons, ultimately makes sense. But if Karma is just a human concept containing no fragment of truth, then the past is the proverbial ‘water under the bridge’ and it makes no sense to revisit the huge database of mind-videos stored to memory, except for the memories of happy moments which we so much enjoy reliving in our heads. If the actions during the flow of sand already gone from our hourglass are meaningless, does it then imply that the present minutes and hours flowing out now, also means nothing? NOTHING? Can this be true? If this is true, then our whole, entire existence is also meaningless, and this, I absolutely refuse to believe!
The speed at which I experience the passing of time differs with the activity in which I am engaged in at that moment. If I am waiting in anticipation for something enjoyable, time drags and when I am in the midst of treasured moments, time flies. How can this be? Why is this so? Our emotions at each of these moments seem to determine how we experience the passing of time. Our experience of time is as varied as our different perspectives, but the fact remains that the actions we perform today does in some way, shape and dictate the sequence of events which will happen to each of us in the future. It almost seems that out of this thinking, the idea of Karma was born eons ago.
We find so many ways of measuring time, but I have come to the conclusion that if time itself is used instead, as a measurement of our personal progress, of intellectual maturity, and of mental evolution, then time becomes so much more interesting, meaningful and even more intriguing.
Let us use the example of December 31st 2012.
It is the New Year! 2013! On the night of New Year’s Eve, we all sat around talking excitedly, waiting in anticipation for the arrival of midnight, and the New Year. Many of us would remember that last day of planning the details for the impending celebrations! On that special night, where we would be? What would we be doing? And with whom! Time ticked away ever so slowly towards midnight. That last hour, that last minute, the last second and then, it was the New Year. And everyone rejoiced! Hugs, kisses, handshakes, and well wishes all around. Drinking and partying and all the socializing that have become standard celebration each year and on almost every occasion worth celebrating.
But, what makes last year any different from this year? What makes a moment in time of last year any different from a moment of time in this year? More specifically, we are sitting for the past few moments in our favorite chair reading this article today. What makes this period of time any different from moments sitting in the same chair a day of last year? If you examine the two periods of time closely, they seem to be the same! Nothing really is different, except that the calendar has changed and time has moved on, leaving us a bit older!
But if we look at time as a measurement, there is a huge difference between last year and this year. If I look at time from the perspective of, what is better and what is worse? If I look at these moments in time and I ask myself that “as a person, as a human being, am I better than I was last year?”
Am I a kinder and gentler person?
Am I being more compassionate to others?
Do I show more patience with others?
Am I better at showing empathy to those who unfortunately suffer from illnesses?
Do I show love to all in my human family?
Am I more tolerant with what was previously intolerable to me?
If I believe in spirituality, have I made spiritual progress in my life? Am I getting better at conquering my ego and do I focus less on feeding it?
If I am religious, is my practice of my prayers and meditation more productive? Am I finding peace of mind easier?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then I should continue to do the right thing and walk that same path of progression, and I will definitely advance in this life. My thinking is evolving. If however, the answer to any of these questions is no, then I have a lot of work to do. I am not living up to my potential and have to continue to work on it a bit harder to realize my purpose.
We should all, at some point in time, ask ourselves these questions so that we can understand the direction in which our life is going, why this is happening and what we can do to change it.
The fact about time remains that ‘If we change nothing, then nothing changes’.
Depending on our perspective, it is a spiritual, religious, and moral challenge, and as the well-known Guyanese Hindu priest and humanitarian Pandit Budhram Mahadeo once said many years ago, “That I am a better person tomorrow than I am today, better next week than I am this week and better next year than I am this year.”
That, in simple words should be the ultimate goal of every member of the Human Family.
Om, Shanti. Om Shanti. Om Shanti. (Peace to everyone)
Jag B Mahadeo
It Must Be Love! – A Sad But True Story of a Family’s Life Experience
Written In 2011 by Jag B Mahadeo
Little Timmy had grown up, and now known as Tim to everyone except his parents and little brother Rob, who insisted on calling him Timmy. He had matured into a muscular, handsome, and well-liked twenty year old who had everything going his way until that fateful day at the lake. On that day he had gone swimming with his friends and was having fun in the water. He liked to swim and loved the thrill of diving high off the rocks and the feeling of his body slicing through the refreshing water. On this day however, his life was about to be turned upside down. On his final dive of the day, his feet left the smooth granite rock and the feeling of exhilaration flashed through him as he streaked into the clear, cold water in a smooth dive with the cheering of his friends still ringing in his ears.
His mind was blurry and his consciousness slowly seeped back into him. He could hear sobbing somewhere close by and wondered why anyone would be crying. But something was wrong! In the blurry haze of his memory, he barely recalled a bit about cold, splashing water, but the rising awareness of overbearing pain in his whole being flushed away all other thoughts as they swirled around in his brain. Only the gnawing question persisted. What happened? At first, his eyelids felt stuck but after a slow, long effort, his eyes slowly opened to multiple distorted images of figures moving through blinding white light, which only served to increase the intensity of the pain which he was feeling.
Flash forward twenty three years, and Tim now sat in his wheelchair, immobilized from the neck down, essentially a brain which was totally unaware of the body to which it was still connected and dependent on staying alive. A long time ago, during the first few years in his ever-present wheelchair, he could have vaguely remembered the incident as it was described to him by his mother, that on his last dive into the lake on that fateful day, his head had struck the edge of an underwater rock and he had spent the next three weeks in a coma. Now, the memories of the incident and all he had known, just float by as incoherent bits and pieces of a faded, picture-like slideshow, skipping and stalling into a glob of unrecognizable information in his head.
Over the years, the painfully long days passed by as an endless parade of ambulance rides to the hospital, the visits of his four-hours-a-day caretaker, constant fussing by his mother, and his father’s sometimes stoic, yet gentle attention in the evenings, after he returned from the tech company where he worked all day long. His once-caring relatives have long ago stopped visiting to offer their support, and now kept to their own ‘normal’ and busy lives. Every few months, some of his relatives may stop by for a few minutes, but the effort seems more at pacifying their own guilt about their infrequent visits, rather than to lend true emotional support, even though his family did not seem like they needed it much.
Now, Tim is just a mind which is trapped in an unresponsive, useless body, or so it seems. Whether he slept or not, no one really knew unless they watched him constantly, since there was no way in which he could communicate what, or how he felt, which was not much anyway, given the fact that he was always under the influence of his daily diet of pain-erasing and mind-numbing medication. When the monotony of the previous night was over, he was washed, cleaned and fed the slurry of tasteless mush, together with the daily handful of pills. When he was too ill to eat, the intravenous tubes were always on the ready, to be plugged into the almost permanent receptacle stuck onto his lower arm.
This daily routine was a grind. Or was it?
This was Tim’s existence! This was his life!
With a life as this, if it could be called a life, what was the purpose?
What is it that keeps a family like this motivated to keep doing what they’re doing, day after day and year after year?
How many people on earth can keep doing this for so long without giving up?
How, over the long years have their dedication and perseverance managed to remain steadfast and unbroken?
What is it that keeps this family driven to serve Tim with absolutely no hope of his recovery?
Isn’t this the true practice of tolerance, kindness, caring, consideration, empathy, and patience? All these key components which, when put together makes up true Love?
Then this must be LOVE in its truest sense!
It must…. be LOVE!
Jag B Mahadeo
Mantras
(As explained by Pandita Rajkumaree Mahadeo ‘Mama’ and documented by Jag B Mahadeo)
Mantras are words of power. When verbalized or internalized, they become vibrations of power. The person repeating these mantras eventually feel these vibrations flowing through the body, resulting in a peaceful state of mind which is critical for the beginning of true prayer or the communion with God.
To allow oneself to get to this state of mind requires internal focus, concentration and minimal distractions from external sources, or the ability to block out or separate out these external distractions. For this reason, music accompanying mantras during meditation or true prayer is frowned upon, since the music lends another type of sound vibration to the total experience and makes it harder to let the vibrations of the mantras themselves ‘flow’. Instead, the person sometimes finds him/her self getting caught in the rhythm of the music instead of the vibrations of the mantras.
Mantras are truly great. They are ancient and they work extremely powerfully. The word “mantra” is derived from two Sanskrit words. The first is “manas” or “mind,” which provides the “man” syllable. The second syllable is drawn from the Sanskrit word “trai” meaning to “protect” or to “free from.” Therefore, the word mantra in its most literal sense means, “to free from the mind.” Mantra is, at its core, a tool used by the mind that eventually frees one from internal and external distractions of the mind.
The journey from mantra to freedom of mind is a truly phenomenal one. As the vibrations from the mantras flow through the body, the mind expands, deepens and widens and eventually finds oneness with the essence of its cosmic existence and experiences calm and peace. On its journey, the mind begins to understand much about the source and essence of the vibration of all things.
As noted above, Mantras eventually quiet the mind. The subconscious mind is a collective consciousness of all the thoughts that exist throughout the physical and deeper subconscious level, encompassing all that really makes one who he is at the moment. The dedicated use of mantra can go deep into the subconscious thoughts stored in the mind and transform the mind into a true sanctuary of peace.
All words produce an actual physical vibration. Over time, if we know what the effect of that vibration is, then the word may come to have meaning associated with the effect of saying that word with its vibrations. This is one level of energy basis for words.
Another level is the intent behind the sound. If the actual physical vibration is coupled with a mental intention, the vibration then contains an additional mental component that influences the result of saying that particular word. The sound is the carrier wave and the intent is overlaid upon the waveform, just as a colored lens influences the appearance and effect of a white light.
One way to say a mantra is simply to verbalize it repeatedly.
Then the higher level is when one repeats the mantra quietly while only moving the tongue.
The yet higher level is to repeat it mentally without moving any muscle in the body including the tongue.
The chanting of mantras is an ancient method of allowing ones mind to find and experience peace and calm and the more time spent perfecting the use of mantras, one finds a certain power and discipline which allows them to control all facets of their lives.
Since anything in our lives that is worth having, from wealth, health, a bank account and other assets to love and satisfying our personal desired, requires a measure of discipline, then it makes sense to practice our mantras and meditation which instills discipline in our minds.
In another western explanation, a mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of “creating transformation” within oneself. Its use and type varies according to the school and philosophy associated with the mantra.
Mantras originated in the ancient Vedic tradition of India, an essential part of the Hindu tradition and a customary practice within Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. The use of mantras is now widespread throughout various spiritual movements which are based on, or off-shoots of these earlier Eastern traditions and religions. The Om syllable which is believed to be the “Sound of the Universe” is considered a mantra in its own right in the Vedanta beliefs.
Mantras! Words of power! Vibrations of power!
Pt. Jag B Mahadeo.
Universal Love – Explained
Sometimes it seems that we live in a society where we have taken this beautiful word ‘Love’ and put so many connotations on it, that many are ashamed to use this word. To this word we have associated countless expectations, different meanings of unreasonable and selfish commitments, and have made its use so shallow that it has somehow lost its true meaning; unless we have taken the time to understand its spiritual meaning and drank of the very essence of Universal Love.
There is no love like a mother’s love. There is no love quite like what a mother feels for her own child or for her own children. Like with almost all of our physical existence and comprehension, there may be exceptions, but for the most part, a mother’s love is true, unique and complete. Now as children of God, if we were to strive to feel that kind of love for every single child of God, for every single one of our mother, father and child! If we were to succeed in showing that kind of love to each other, to every other living thing, and every other soul, then we would be showing Universal Love. The kind of Love which is inherent within us and the seeds of which is planted deep within each beating heart! If we were to show this kind of Love, we would find that we will be expressing Love without looking or expecting any kind of rewards. We would be showing Love that is true and we would be showing all the components of real, true Love. We would be exhibiting selflessness, forgiveness, tolerance, kindness, caring, patience, compassion, and empathy.
When we say universal love, we mean this kind of Godly Love which we all have the potential to show, the kind of love that God himself shows.
This is Universal Love and should be a goal for each one of us.
Pt. Jag B Mahadeo
Universe Love – Explained
Sometimes it seems that we live in a society where we have taken this beautiful word ‘Love’ and put so many connotations on it, that many are ashamed to use this word. To this word we have associated countless expectations, different meanings of unreasonable and selfish commitments, and have made its use so shallow that it has somehow lost its true meaning; unless we have taken the time to understand its spiritual meaning and
Trial post