Emotions

 The hardest thing in life is to appropriately deal with emotions. By that I mean to incorporate them meaningfully rather than to disregard them, to dismiss them as unnecessary, unwanted, useless or as obstacles. 

As human beings we can conjure up any thought we desire in an instant. To some degree we may also perform any action we desire at any time given that it doesn't break the laws of physics. But the realm of emotions presents a curious paradox in that what may 'seem right' might not at all 'feel right'. At times our feelings are at odds with our conscience, our ethics, our morals or sense of worth. 

Often we 'do the right thing' amidst feeling quite uncomfortable about it. Or we may delight in doing something we know is quite sinister and unwarranted, yet go ahead regardless. So what rôle do emotions play in shaping our character? What is shame for? Regret? Remorse? Hate? Vindictiveness? Fear? Love? Laziness? 

Domesticated animals with proper training might appear to display human traits such as calm, sombre patience, austerity and charity, discipline and obedience; but really they are just acting the part in expectation of a future reward. A way to know this for sure is to withhold any 'treats' (rewards) for a period of time and soon one will witness them reverting back to animalistic sense gratification behaviours. In training them with 'human' traits they are reduced to robots imitating learnt patterns. 

Human emotions - or for that matter, dog emotions - are a complex mixture of tastes (the Sanskrit term is rasa) whether they be positive (likes and preferences) or negative (dislikes and aversions). In one way these can all be classed as anarthas, unwanted things that get in the way of self-realisation, because they collectively represent impediments. The true transcendentalist is really not concerned with anything material, whether it be good or bad. Emotions can definitely be obstacles whenever they cloud our judgment. How many times have we made a bad decision based on being too emotional about a concern? How often do we let our partiality grant undue preference to an unworthy recipient? 

Let's take a hypothetical situation - one we would rather avoid at all costs. Picture two children trapped in a burning house. One is unknown to us, the other is our offspring who unfortunately is inflicted with a terminal disease with little time left to live. Who would we rescue? The child with the potential of having their whole life ahead of them, or our son or daughter who will be dead in a matter of months anyway? 

Of course, without even thinking most of us would instinctively rescue our close family. Emotions aside, it makes more sense to rescue the unknown child with greater lifetime potential. Altruism is borne by what is beneficial for the greater good rather than selfish considerations. 

All other things aside, the singlemost important factor in our lives is what makes us happy. This is 100% determined by our emotions. The happiness felt by a poverty-stricken child upon receiving a gift of a few beans may be far greater than what a corporate businessman feels making a couple of million dollars in a takeover. It's all relative, and it all comes down to rasa, the emotion we feel. 

Sometimes we need a pat on the back, sometimes we get more out of doing something for someone anonymously. It all depends. When I played in a band I'd get a buzz out of the audience cheering at gigs. But as a busker I sensed the appreciation more when a passer-by chucked in a gold coin for a Beatles or Stones cover. That is a truly individually motivated action, and one I learnt to cherish. Often drunkards leaning on the bar don't even clap because they are too busy using one of their hands to hold their beverage. 

History of Civilisation

It is very difficult to discuss the topic of 'what qualifies as a civilisation' without getting accused of being racist, white supremacist or whatever because technology is a product of advanced civilisations. Generally this involves permanent dwellings, communities and intensive farming. For instance although the Subcontinent has its tribal indigenous peoples such as the Vedda (aka mountain men of Sri Lanka), their ancient arts and sciences such as architecture, mathematics, music, astronomy, medicine, the wheel and other machines all came from the intellectual class of Brahminical society - not the Vedda. Because of their social class structure the intelligent pandits had the facility to concentrate on intellectual concerns where the “cream rose to the top”. The disc or wheel is an archetypal part of ancient Vedic mythology yet western historians place its invention to only four thousand years ago in line with the concept of early humans evolving from apes into primitive Neanderthals. This recent Darwinian concept is completely rejected by Easterners who adhere to time-honoured traditional lore.

Of course there is also the ancient mythology that Avatars (the embodiments of the Gods) descended from the heavenly planets and introduced knowledge of the arts and sciences to humanity. This concept is not restricted to the Subcontinent and indeed peoples from all over the globe share similar traditions of Gods descending eg Greeks, Scandinavians (Norse, Vikings etc), Orientals and American natives such as “Red indians”, Aztecs, Incas, and Mayan civilisations.

Either way, it appears that technological advancement is either a product of organised complex society, or God-given boons, or possibly both.

Not everyone agrees that Australian Aborigines are “the oldest continuous culture”. After all, they migrated from Asia and that's still here. It may be more accurate and scholarly to describe them as the most isolated for the longest time. It is impossible to date the origins of Chinese culture because it pre-dates the invention of writing and no records exist. A similar situation is prevalent in Indian folklore where they widely accept that their culture goes back millions of years. Certainly both these ancient cultures had highly organised and structured societies which is why they were so efficient and long-lived.

The Northern, Southern and Mesoamericans and various peoples of Oceania are easier to date, being much more recent. In a way the same could be said about Europe but to a lesser degree. Asia and Africa stand out as having the most ancient roots. Few historians argue about whether Aborigines migrated from mainland Asia via the land bridge that existed up until the Last Glacial Maximum when sea levels were hundreds of feet (or metres) lower than at present - it's more about when.

As to why technology appeared in Asia and not Africa - that might rest purely on the differences between tribal and civilised social structures. Perhaps “civilisations” were preoccupied with control, power and opulence by utilising and exploiting resources on a large scale rather than “living in harmony with nature” in small clans and tribes? As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

There is one controversial theory about early Aboriginal migration in that it was involuntary, that they were exiled by the ruling monarchy in Asia for refusing to abide by the King's (or Queen's) Laws. Survival plays a large role in the history of human migrations, whether it be across the Bering land bridge, the Out of Africa theory, the Out of India theory, the Mongolians and Huns of Eastern Asia, the Celts, Saxons, Slavs, Greeks and Romans of Europe or the Polynesians, Melanesians and Australasians of Oceania. Peoples have always been at war and on the move and Australians are no different. I mean, look at Australian politics!

Yet another controversial theory is that up until the Last Glacial Maximum (which ended 20,000 years ago) what is erroneously termed ‘The Last Ice Age’ (look at the frozen polar caps - technically we're still in an Ice Age) massive glaciation caused civilisations, nations, tribes and peoples in general to be cut off and become isolated. This geographical isolation caused a ‘losing touch with culture’ and a corresponding dumbing down of traditional knowledge as people retreated and sought shelter in caves and hospitable environments.

If you are to look at an atlas you will see that most of the major mountain ranges are aligned North-South (the Rockies & Andes of the Americas, Great Dividing Range of Australia, Scandinavia, the Urals of Russia, Ethiopian Highlands of Africa) An exception to this (and to a lesser extent the Swiss Alps of Europe) are the Himalayas which afforded India protection from the advancing glaciers and stopped them in their tracks. Traditional Indian folklore has it that this is why their culture has remained intact since prehistoric times. It also explains how Italy and Greece have some of the oldest prospering cultures in Europe.

So instead of the usual Cave Man myth of humans being unevolved and stupid we have a scenario where cultures that kept their knowledge base intact (India and China and perhaps Italy and Greece) maintained flourishing civilisations.. those that weren't cut off didn't had to start all over again. This may explain the dreamtime and creation myths of aborigines which are undated and untraceable. The ‘J’ shape of the Great Dividing Range would have afforded protection inland from the advancing glaciers of Antarctica, concurring with the vast inland sea of ancient Australia.

Worth noting is that Equatorial regions weren't affected so much by the Glacial period although temperatures would have been much cooler. This coincides with the oldest cultures inhabiting the stable Equatorial Zone. The Inuits of Alaska/Canada are a later migration, the first one or possibly two being the north and south Americans who have distinctively different genetic markers indicating separate waves of colonisation. Evidence points to the Inuits crossing the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska afterwards just as it was being inundated.

This means there were at least three waves of migration in the Americas. A similar thing may have occurred in Australia. We generally accept the forty to sixty thousand year date but some historians suggest an earlier first wave as far back a 120,000 years ago based on skulls excavated from ancient historical sites. So that means at least two waves.

None of this concurs with the biblical account of humans first populating Earth 4,000 years ago - nor the Vedic one of millions of years. In fact, all cultures have different accounts and none of them really line up. Do we dismiss them all or try to amalgamate them? Or is that archaeological heresy?

Carbon dating only goes back 55,000 years. Uranium however has a half life of 4.5 billion years and eventually decays to ordinary lead. This throws the biblical chronology into the ‘myth’ category. If creation is a mere 4,000 years old how can we have lead?

The Universal Language

 Aliens, outer space, the astral plane, mysticism, ghosts, spirits, and in general 'the other side' form a complex set of audiovisual imagery ingrained in our subconscious. Because of years and years of subliminal programming from exposure to how they are depicted in the arts we cannot help but connect certain sights and sounds to 'out of this world' paranormal phenomena. 

But is this imagery valid? 

Artists and musicians maintain that there are patterns and a hierarchical order connecting all sensory experiences from sorrow and grief, to blandness and boredom, to joy and relief. We relate bright colours, high notes and light, boppy tunes to happy events and dark murky colours, sombre low notes and plodding rhythms to the opposite. But why? Is it just conditioning? How did they come to represent those things? 

Why are aliens portrayed as technologically advanced, communicating by digital synthesised noises, having superpowers and always deformed, mutant, half machine or half zombie? Unless you've encountered them in real life the only reason you'd expect to see an alien lifeform as weird is due to the arts. All hypothetical indeed. 

Back to the real world. The reason I mentioned the astral plane earlier is because many philosophers, transcendentalists, theosophists and metaphysical seekers connect the astral planes as where we go when we dream, where we go when we die, and where we wait until we either take birth again or go to heaven if you're religious (I put that in for fun). 

Here's something to think about. No matter what language is spoken, everyone laughs and cries the same. Foreigners don't go 'boo hoo' when they laugh and no-one goes 'ha ha ha' when they cry. 

Some suggest that it is all part of a Universal Language. This is where the imagery comes from - a secret, hidden vault of life experiences that exists eternally in another dimension. This is what artists and musicians tap into to express themselves, and why it has an effect on us, moves us, and leaves an imprint. 

Aliens again! What the? Maybe we HAVE seen a UFO. Maybe we HAVE been abducted and had our memory wiped. And what's with all the high-pitched screeching violins at seances and ghostly hauntings, and those theremins (THAT science fiction sound) whenever a spaceship appears out of nowhere. Perhaps those moviemakers have taken a bit of artistic licence and stolen a few things from the vault. Or perhaps they are real and exist on another plane or dimension that we are unaware of during normal waking consciousness. 

Every now and then I'd like to hear an alien monster make harp string sounds. Or a ghost playing the banjo. And a UFO with trumpets for jet propulsion. 

No. That would be far too incongruous and our minds won't make sense of any of it. Not in the vault, apparently. 

Radical Activism and the Great Reset - Covid conspiracy

I think I get the Great Reset/Covid conspiracy thing now. 

The Left-wing and Centrist ('normal') narrative is that the Great Reset, the official name of the June 2020 meeting of the World Economic Forum, is a response to the pandemic where various measures to implement recovery were discussed. 

Along comes 'radical activism'. The Far-Right and even some Extreme-Left narrative is that Covid-19 is a bioweapon CREATED to deliberately CAUSE the need for The Great Reset. 

Sounds like the old "which came first, the chicken or the egg" paradox… so what exactly is this Great Reset? It's supposed to be about reshaping the world, with catchphrases like 'stakeholder economy', 'green growth', the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution', 'computerised mechanisation and manufacturing' and many more, involving 5G telecommunications, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3-D printing and lots of other space age technologies. 

The altruistic concept is to create a fairer world economy that uses sustainable development to recover from the pandemic. The Alt-Right ideology doesn't believe any of this and says it is all about population control, wealth redistribution and the New World Order taking away our liberties and making us slaves. Coming from that is the anti-vax stance, lockdown protests and general non-compliance with laws brought in by governments to counter the spread of the pandemic. 

So are the Far-Right helping or making things worse? Hmmm.. 

It is very feasible that this novel covid-19, the 7th strain of coronavirus known so far, is entirely natural in origin (the first 4 cause the common cold and are thousands of years old; the other two are 21st century 'mutations' MERS and SARS). A third theory is that it was deliberately leaked from a Wuhan lab so the Chinese could take over the world by destroying the economies of all the other nations. That one is far, far scarier than the Far-Right conspiracy. 

In the past we have successfully used vaccines to deal with diseases like polio and measles and to eradicate smallpox. The problem with covid-19 is that vaccines aren't so effective against airborne viruses that infect the respiratory tract. These viral infections are much harder to control, like the way influenza mutates so constantly that each season, flu vaccine effectiveness varies anywhere from 10% to 60%!

In any case, by far the smartest thing anyone can do is to strengthen our front line of defence - our immune system - and in the famous words of Benjamin Franklin, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". 

Satyam Setty

Fb post #1

Two different Satya brand Nag Champas? Yep. The declining availability the basic ingredient, a resin called HALMADDI from the Ailanthus triphysa tree, is the most logical explanation for the change over the years, apart from seasonal variation (as happens with any natural ingredient). Up until the 1990's, extracting the resin killed many of the trees because of uncontrolled and crude techniques, eventually leading to a Government ban, pushing up the price. In 2011 this ban was lifted under restricted licences and supply increased soon after to try to keep up with demand. Unfortunately it still isn't enough and a thriving blackmarket exists for the illegally extracted resin. This explains the lowering of quality of nag champa incense as halmaddi becomes more expensive and is used in lesser amounts to make the sticks. 

It is hard to independently substantiate the claims made in the reddit article. Some of this info may be incorrect, I'm just learning about it now on the net. There is much confusion and in typical Indian style there is a shifty air of secrecy about it all. 

After the father died (K. N. Satyam Setty, who founded the Srinivas Sugandhalaya company in 1964 that makes nag champa incense and soap) the two sons went to court and split up the company in 2014 (it was those 2014 batches that ran out a while later as supply was interrupted). Apparently the court ruled that they could continue to use the same brand name for their separate companies... Under their father, one brother handled the administrative business side from Mumbai while the other ran the factory in Bangalore.

Rumour has it that the Bangalore company still hand-rolls the original recipe whereas the Mumbai counterparts are sometimes machine-rolled, the recipe allegedly being altered to allow manufacture on machines. There are also slightly different logos - the new one looks more like a red and blue C joined together (Mumbai brand) instead of the usual two S's (Bangalore brand). The one I bought the other week (the Mumbai variety) has "traditionally hand rolled in India" printed on the box and the back no longer reads "2014 series", being made after the court ruling allowing the brothers to trade using similar trademarked names. 

I first noticed a change when the incense I was buying had a perfectly round wooden stick instead of the split bamboo one with square edges - no doubt to enable machine rolling. I was told by the shop assistant that this was to help stamp out slave labour.. their website claims to not use child labour nor animal fats.  

The original Bangalore (or Bengaluru) stick had square edges and was hand-rolled, supposedly to the original recipe. It has the logo on the right. You can also tell the hand-rolled item by its irregular shape with flat patches and lumps. 

To make things even more confusing the Mumbai company (inferior? machine made) lists a slightly different Bengaluru address for the factory! This story COULD BE TOTAL BULL.. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Incense/comments/5i8td4/identifying_fake_satya_sai_baba_nag_champa/

It's repeated here with slight variations

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SATYA-SAI-BABA-NAG-CHAMPA-INCENSE-STICKS-Bulk-Pack-12-x-15g/150778725750?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

..but that doesn't mean it's true. I don't believe everything I see in the internet ha ha

This explains better the changes in the good ol' blue box nag champa incense. They reckon they stopped using halmaddi in 1999. I DO remember how the old incense used to go soggy, testament to halmaddi's hygroscopic nature!

https://olfactoryrescueservice.wordpress.com/category/incense/by-company/india/shrinivas-sugandhalaya/

Fb post #2

More on the Setty brothers saga. [update] I am starting to think neither brand is "fake" and it's just sibling rivalry. Both the soap and incense available in Australia come from Mumbai. The original incense made with halmaddi decades ago would have come from Bangalore. Both brands are inferior nowadays. I have the top one, with a noticeable difference in perfume compared to a couple of years ago.  

Top: elder brother Nagraj runs his company from Mumbai as "Shrinivas Sugandhalaya LLP". Note the Bengaluru (Bangalore) address as "Factory: No. 21 & 22, 8th Cross, Magadi Road" etc. This is the company that machine rolls some of their sticks.

Below: an earlier packet before the split, with the original, simpler "Shrinivas Sugandhalaya" registered name. Later, the younger brother K. S. Balakrishna Setty who kept wholly in Bangalore, began trading as "Shrinivas Sugandhalaya (BNG) LLP" and still hand-rolls all their incense. Note the original address as 1/9, 8th Cross, Magadi Road, etc. 

The boxes use different coloured seals, have different Free Call numbers, small variations in print, and both carry a warning to avoid imitations!

[update] so there are at least 3 versions...

"Shrinivas Sugandhalaya" the old company before the split

"Shrinivas Sugandhalaya (BNG) LLP" - Bangalore, still in the old factory - Balakrishna Setty (younger bro) 

"Shrinivas Sugandhalaya LLP" - Mumbai, using a different Bangalore factory address - Nagraj Setty (older bro)

It appears that the younger brother at (BNG) LLP is behind the internet campaign against "fake Satya Nag Champa", accusing the older one at LLP of possibly changing the recipe to facilitate machine rolling in the new factory up the road. LLP have branched out into dozens of scents now - patchouli, sandalwood, you name it, all in modern fancy packaging. It may be that Nagraj simply wanted to move with the times and Balakrishna refused, sticking to the old methods. That is my opinion on why they split, looking at what they've done since. The new Mumbai branch is heavily into the export trade and has become very westernised. That's what I see in Rohani's, the local Indian Imports shop in Dromana.

Fb post #3

The Nag Champa soap made by Srinivas Sugandhalaya has gone plastic, ditching the old wax paper wrapper, adding to the world's plastic problem. 

Also the scent and colour is different - a pale grey instead of creamy white.

This is from the older brother's new factory since the father who started the company died. Though both brothers use the same brand name, the modern mechanised one, recognisable by only "LLC" at the end of the brand name, uses changed recipes and is not the same as the original - "(BNG) LLP". 

This goes for the incense as well. The younger brother Balakrishna Setty is still in the old factory using the old methods, hand-rolling, etc but it's the older Nagraj whose mechanised stuff is being exported/imported more. 

I have switched to Caitanya brand hand-rolled Nag Champa incense made in Vrindavan the traditional way. I wish I could do that with the soap as well!