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The photographs illustrate the severity of the loss of ice mass among the glaciers surrounding Mount Everest. The melt waters of these high altitude glaciers supply crucial seasonal flows to the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which hundreds of millions of people downstream depend on for their livelihoods. If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be severely diminished by the middle of this century.

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There is a double aspect of biography in Savitri, of the legendary Aswapati and Savitri, of the spiritual-occult, of Purusha and Shakti, Presence and Power, Omniscience and Omnipotence, supreme Being and Consciousness-Force, divine Will and divine Action, of human incarnates as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This double aspect is present in it in intimate and functional relationship, of the Divine’s will-to-be and the Divine’s will-to-become. It is a manifesto for the Divine’s manifestation.

The first half of Savitri is essentially presenting the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati, and the second the shakti-yoga of Savitri. For an epic entitled Savitri, this may look somewhat disproportionate in division but Savitri is at once a legend and a symbol, both together, the legend capitalising on the myth, and the symbol unfolding the manifesto in the language that holds in it the future. The legend essentially comes from the narrative as is given in the Mahabharata, it having the splendid Vedic roots in it. The Vedic roots themselves are symbolic; it is a revelatory myth belonging to the Vedic cycle. Savitri’s biographical is carrying in it this double aspect, the legendary and the symbolic.

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In August 2010 something happens that only happens every 823 years: 5 Sundays… 5 Mondays… 5 Tuesdays…

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There was nothing at all to be seen
But hundreds of friendly candles all over the sky
In remembrance of frightened children.
I went back to bed …
The three dreams started singing a little song.

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In Indic thought, there is no trade secret. The foundation of yoga is that the key to god, or the macrocosm, or the absolute ... lies within the individual and can be accessed through a certain set of practices. It's a beautifully simple but ultimately profound concept that has been allowed to flourish unchecked for millennia. The process of discovering and re-imagining the divine is in your hands: The God Project.

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Maybe, godhood would be a neurochemical alteration in the milieu of the neuronal networks, resulting in a perceptive variance. And spiritual progress could be monitored by an imaging modality.

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In liquid sounds tumble rapture and sweetness of desire

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From the other end where Death is the beginning
Crawls the Infant with a crescent on his head:
Now must these tireless gods and goddesses
With their radiant feet walk on the Earth’s brow.

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“But it is the psychic being, it is that which will materialise itself and become the supramental being!” There were particularities, but these were not well-marked, and it was clearly a being that was neither man nor woman, having the combined characteristics of both. The psychic being materialises itself, and that gives continuity to evolution. This creation gives altogether the feeling that there is nothing arbitrary, there is a kind of divine logic behind and it is not like our human logic. Then I understood why the mind and the vital were sent out of this body, leaving the psychic being—naturally it was that which had been always governing all the movements. And it is precisely the psychic that survives. So, if it materializes itself, it means the abolition of death. But “abolition”—nothing is abolished except what is not in accordance with the Truth, which goes away; whatever is not capable of transforming itself in the image of the psychic and becoming an integral part of the psychic.

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The first psycho-spiritual transformation has occurred in Aswapati. Next, he has to make the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness. But this too is as yet “only an individual victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal realisation and new creation. It is for the fulfilment of the new creation he invokes the divine Shakti to incarnate herself here, that by which all opposition is removed and the prospects for the higher life opened out. That is the work Aswapati came to do.

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The idea of a consciousness and an object of consciousness is bondage; freedom from it is liberation. Consciousness, the object of consciousness and everything else is the Self; this is the gist of all systems of philosophy. There is only consciousness here; this universe is nothing but consciousness; you are consciousness; I am consciousness; the worlds are consciousness-that is the conclusion. That which exists and that which is known to exist are all the Self; anything else which seems to shine does not really exist. Consciousness alone shines by itself. Ideas of knower and known are idle postulates.

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Manoj Das and Sraddhalu Ranade

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No doubt, hatred and cursing are not the proper attitude. It is true also that to look upon all things and all people with a calm and clear vision, to be uninvolved and impartial in one's judgments is a quite proper yogic attitude. A condition of perfect samata can be established in which one sees all as equal, friends and enemies included, and is not disturbed by what men do or by what happens. The question is whether this is all that is demanded from us. If so, then the general attitude will be of a neutral indifference to everything. But the Gita, which strongly insists on a perfect and absolute samata, goes on to say, “Fight, destroy the adversary, conquer.” If there is no kind of general action wanted, no loyalty to Truth as against Falsehood except for one's personal sadhana, no will for the Truth to conquer, then the samata of indifference will suffice. But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are arranged, invisible forces which can use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one is among the disciples, the seekers of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, to stand against the forces that attack it and seek to stifle it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either side, to refuse any action of hostility even against assailants; Sri Krishna, who insisted so much on samata, strongly rebuked his attitude and insisted equally on his fighting the adversary. “Have samata,” he said, “and seeing clearly the Truth, fight.” Therefore to take sides with the Truth and to refuse to concede anything to the Falsehood that attacks, to be unflinchingly loyal and against the hostiles and the attackers, is not inconsistent with equality. It is personal and egoistic feeling that has to be thrown away; hatred and vital ill-will have to be rejected. But loyalty and refusal to compromise with the assailants and the hostiles or to dally with their ideas and demands and say, “After all, we can compromise with what they ask from us”, or to accept them as companions and our own people—these things have a great importance. If the attack were a physical menace to the work and the leaders and doers of the work, one would see this at once. But because the attack is of a subtler kind, can a passive attitude be right? It is a spiritual battle inward and outward; by neutrality and compromise or even passivity one may allow the enemy forces to pass and crush down the Truth and its children. If you look at it from this point, you will see that if the inner spiritual equality is right, the active loyalty and firm taking of sides is as right, and the two cannot be incompatible.

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Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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But the SeaKettle, which can desalinate salt water, sounds more like a floating hotel room. The luxury life raft is an entry in the James Dyson Award design competition by designer Kim Hoffman, and it looks like a relatively comfortable place to spend a few nights following a ship-capsizing squall.

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Every day should be regarded as a day when a descent may take place or a contact established with the higher consciousness.

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I travelled to Boston a few days ago to attend the 40th reunion of my college class, my first such get-together with former classmates since I graduated from Brandeis University in 1970. I went because I hadn't stayed much in touch with them, I went because I was curious how their lives had played out over these long years, and I went, perhaps most of all, to revisit the past that had shaped me, a past that I had always thought served as a prologue to everything that subsequently happened in my life.

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Muse of Light is the word in ruby breath of the dawn,
A sight breaking in chants of the early birds:
Her haste is the chariot racing with the wind’s,
As though to find the strange invisible all where;
Not horses but sounds of hooved triumph invade
Heaven’s dumbnesses: in her rhythms hurries delight.

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Some are beginning to have experiences, but the greatest difficulty is the mind. There are some who would go much more quickly if they did not have that. It is the body that is busy having all kinds of experiences and is learning, but as soon as it tries to express itself, it says, “No, it is not true, it is not so.” It is this experience of the consciousness, one is in divine bliss, and it becomes almost a torture! The body would scream in pain and, just a little, the thing becomes bliss. All the suffering vibrations are sustained by the mass of the general human consciousness, and the other is sustained by something that is immutable, this immutable Peace. And then that, the body, it is not in a condition to express itself, it is not the time for expression.

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"The launch was absolutely beautiful; it was just so smooth," said Mr Saltmarsh. "We had five people lift it above their heads, start running and it just lifted away into the sky. … This is a huge milestone that puts us at the leading edge," Mr Saltmarsh told BBC News. "It's a practical system that can actually be used rather than simply a demonstration of small technical achievements." The Zephyr flight is the second event of note this year in solar-powered aviation. Last month, Andre Borschberg became the first person to pilot a manned solar plane through the night.

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Just as the ocean alone is real and not the waves, though they appear and disappear, it is Brahman, the ultimate Reality, that is real and not the phenomenal world. An analysis of the three states of consciousness proves this point. A little reflection on the nature of our knowledge and experience will reveal that the plurality and variety perceived in the world have behind them an all-comprehending and all-embracing Unity. The object of our knowledge is nothing but a modification of our consciousness itself, an idea or kalpanā because two things having no common substance immanent in both cannot be related either as cause and effect or subject and the object. Thus knowledge can have as its object only that which is similar in nature with it. All objects, therefore, along with the perceiving subject, are ideas in our mind and nothing outside and beyond the mind.

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