Monday, September 10, 2012


Our paradise lost Forever ..open page Hindu 29.08.2012
Poshmal is playing in her crèche, while her dad is at work at the municipal corporation office. Right then, her mom had got up from her desk at the State tourism department office for lunch break. She had cooked batt, nadir-daal anddum-aaloo. That’s how her husband liked it for lunch. But then, just when she was about to eat the first morsel, she bumped into this colleague of hers, a 30-something lady. She whispers something into her ear and they exchange terrified looks.
Looks like she will break down any moment. But she struggles hard, maintains her composure and swears under her breath. She has no time to ponder over the entire calamity that has struck; she has no time to wonder how it all happened. All she can think of is her husband’s safety, his well-being. After all, the lady just told her that his name was on the hit list! And, of course, she spares a thought for her daughter, playing in the crèche, oblivious to the impending dangers outside.
Her head heavy with turbulent thoughts, she keeps back the food in the box and starts wrapping up quickly. The thought of her little daughter scares her even more. She hurries with the packing and leaves. Her steps are quick but her thoughts slow; trying to gather all that has happened in the past few weeks. She finally gets herself out of the office and starts pacing towards her daughter.
She wants to call her husband meanwhile but alas! That wasn’t the year of cellphones. She will have to wait for another hour before she reaches his office. Thinking so, she quickens her pace when suddenly she sees that temple. She had been going there right since her childhood. That place had been special to her but today she doesn’t stop to seek blessings, well there is no temple there now. It had been razed a few days ago, just a few remains are left now. She curses under her breath at one moment and the very next moment, her eyes are filled with tears.
Slowly and steadily, the feeling had begun to sink in. It wasn’t random killings of Kashmiri Pandits here and there. It was complete ethnic cleansing; a planned massacre of her community. The sense of fear had been in the air for quite some weeks now. After all, it wasn’t without reason that she had stopped wearing mangalsutra and vermilion. There was a reason why she had stopped bowing her head every time she passed a temple on the road.
There was a reason why her husband used to leave for work at different times every single day and return home at odd hours. Her mother-in-law had stopped going out to buy grocery and the brave grandma preferred staying indoors. The family members would go off to sleep every night listening to the blaring sounds coming from loudspeakers. The life-threatening announcements scared her.
But she still went off to sleep like that on countless nights. But one morning, her heart heavy with fear, she was just outside her room when she saw her neighbour come out. She wanted to speak to her. They had been friends for quite some years now, or that’s what she thought at least. But sadly, Naseem just looked away; like she had never known her. That was when she knew, it was all over. Her homeland, her birthplace, her home, everything would soon be lost! She had hoped to see her neighbours, her friends, protest against whatever was happening but they chose to remain silent!
That moment scared her. She was still thinking about it when a sudden gunshot brought her back to her senses. She rushed to the crèche. Poshmal was still there doing her antics in the cot. She picked her up, ran out of there, went to her husband’s office, trying to keep a straight face. She didn’t trust anyone anymore. She did not want anyone to see the surge of her emotions, the feeling of being betrayed, that feeling of being rendered homeless, the feeling of hatred, and the biggest of all, that feeling of knowing that all she could take with her were her family members.
She walked up to her husband and gave him the news. They exchanged grim looks and left hurriedly. And yet again! While on their way back, they saw their small temple, the Vitaal Bharavi mandir, still not destroyed. The legend was no thief could ever enter that area surrounding the temple and it had held true all these years, but then how were these murderers allowed to come in? Who were they to throw them out of their homeland? Calling them kafirs and making death announcements over speakers; asking them to choose between bullets and their homeland, their sweet homes, their temples, their birthplace, their beautiful memories of a lifetime.
The couple looked at the deity and then at each other and walked past it. They went home, and even before the elders started asking them any question, they started packing up. Poshmal’s dad started giving instructions to all, quickly moving around the house and looking out of the window every now and then. He would see a few army jawans here and there. It gave him confidence. He said to himself, “I will get my family alive out of here.”
Thinking so, he got busy again, and all of them were done in a few hours. After all, they did not have a lot to take along, nor did they have the time to wait any longer. It was 10 in the night already. They had to leave under cover of darkness with the jawans posted there to make sure that the Pandits were taken to safer places.
Safer places meant, out of Kashmir, maybe to Jammu, Udhampur or anywhere; it did not make a difference. Anywhere out of the heaven felt the same. It was just Kashmir which felt privileged. Poshmal would never get to see where she was born, thought her mother. Like the others she would just have to be happy with the stories of the beautiful valley. They were leaving it all behind. They stepped out of the house, got into the truck, with a few other families and drove away. Never to come back to their birthplace. Never to come back to see how their motherland looked like, never to look at those lakes and never to experience the autumn season that looked the most vibrant only in Kashmir. On second thoughts, maybe they did experience the autumns again. After all, that is what they have been experiencing till date.
Like The Chinars that have fallen from their place
The valley too has lost its grace
The heaven doesn’t exist anymore
The charm is gone that Kashmir ever wore
The political gurus make claims lame and tall
The blood of our community is splattered on the wall
We rot somewhere; the media won’t say a word
This human rights violation, it goes unheard!!
(The writer’s email is sapna.mahaldar@gmail.com)

Monday, August 13, 2012

womens day



Have a great day !!
     
   "If you ever feel in life that all doors are closed..
    Remember these words- a closed door is not always locked"
     
     The Best lines ever said by a MAN

     “I was born -  A Woman was there to hold me   - My MOTHER
      I grew as a child  - A Woman was there to care for me and to play with me  - My SISTER
      I went to school - A Woman was there to help me learn  - My TEACHER
     When I became depressed -  A Woman was there to offer a shoulder  - My GIRL FRIEND
     When I needed company, compatibility & love – A Woman was there for me  -  My WIFE
     When I became tough – A Woman was there to melt me  -  My DAUGHTER
     When I Die -  A Woman was there to absorb me in -  My MOTHERLAND”


                       IF U R A MAN, VALUE EVERY WOMAN !!!
                        IF U R A WOMAN, BE PROUD TO BE !!!

      
   She knows love...
   She keeps the hope...
   She smiles, She inspires...
   She is a woman who keeps you on...
   Respect Her... Care U for each women in your life ..
   Your   mother , sister , wife, & friend. 
   "The willingness to listen , 
    The patience to understand,
    The strength to support, 
    The heart to care & just to be there ...
    Thats the beauty of a woman ...."
        
      

ROAD SAFETY


How many vehicle users believe that the safety of the other person on the road is important to their own safety? Well, according to Motor Vehicles Inspector, Adarsh Kumar G. Nair, few people have such a sense as one can judge by the use of high beam light by most of the vehicle users even on illuminated roads.
The fact that the high beam from your vehicle is blinding the other driver from the opposite direction is of least concern, he said. Blinded by the high beam, the driver coming head on may just collide with your vehicle, he added.
As most of the roads in the State still do not have a divider, the head-on collision during night is mostly facilitated by the high beams or by careless overtaking.
The roads speak to us always, said Mr. Nair. There are so many signs on the roads that one is supposed to learn while getting a driver's licence. But, seldom do drivers make use of these signs to know how to have the right sense of the roads.
According to World Health Statistics of 2008, the status report of the road traffic injuries indicated that it may become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030, overtaking complications of diabetes and HIV/AIDS.
The fatalities on the road have emerged as a major public health concern because of the deaths, disabilities and hospitalisations that have raised socio-economic concerns across the world.
More so in India, as it has overtaken China to take the top position in the most number of deaths in road accidents.
Of the total 13 lakh killed worldwide in the world, 1.4 lakh were killed in India.
Use of mobiles while driving has become a major cause of concern in road accidents, but people continue to use mobiles unless the Motor Vehicles Act comes up with higher fines and penal action. The eyes, the ear and the mouth are all functioning from a singular point in the brain while using a mobile when driving, explains Mr. Nair.
Hence, the reflexes are most likely to be affected in an emergency, he added.
Speed is something that people do not understand while on the road, said Mr. Nair. Even the national highway roads in the State have a maximum permissible speed of 70 km/hr for private cars. There are a lot of roads that cut into the highways or other major roads, hence the driver's alertness and swiftness to use the brakes is important, he said.
Even then, one has to keep in mind that the vehicles have a brake time distance to stop.
Though people have become aware of seat belts, people still use it to avoid fines rather than saving their own lives, said Mr. Nair.
Similar is the case of helmets, he added.

Missing daughters


Missing daughters
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The Census of 2011 revealed that the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group is worse now than in any decade since Independence. It is indisputable that this distressing trend is the result of more people having easier access to medical technologies that reveal the sex of the foetus, and opting for sex-selective abortions. New research published by The Lancet provides further insights into the phenomenon of ‘missing women': as family size in India declines over time, there is a bias against having a second female child when the first is a girl. Based on data drawn from the National Family Health Survey between 1990 and 2005 and the Census of 1991, 2001, and 2011, the paper estimates that for second-order births where the first is a female, the conditional sex ratio fell to an abysmal 836 girls per 1,000 boys in 2005. It is equally a matter of concern that most of India's population now lives in States where selective abortion of girls is common. What stands out in the findings is the positive correlation that education and affluence seem to have with a decline in the sex ratio; the decline was higher in the case of women with ten years or more of education than for mothers with no education. Such a trend calls for closer study of the factors that reinforce the son preference, especially in States and districts with a worsening ratio.
What is fundamentally underscored by the research is the failure of the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act even in its amended form, and the need for a multi-pronged strategy to remove the prejudice against the girl child. Any serious review of the law in the States with the worst child sex ratios should begin with the quarterly reports they are required to file on diagnostic centres, laboratories, and clinics, the action taken against unregistered bodies, search and seizure, and the outcomes of awareness campaigns. Not all States have been filing such reports regularly. The level of involvement of laggard States in implementing the PNDT Act can be gauged from the fact that in Haryana, a crucial notification on setting up Appropriate Authorities was not published in the gazette for 12 years from 1997, and it had to be reissued as an ordinance with retrospective effect. But then, while enforcement measures may have a salutary effect, the more challenging task is to make India a less male-dominated society. The place to start for that mission would be Parliament and the State Legislative Assemblies. Political parties must lead by enabling 33 per cent representation for women in legislatures and raise their visibility. Liberal scholarships for all levels of study and improved economic security may tilt the balance for the less affluent sections.

Aldous huxley


Drugs That Shape Men's Minds

            In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl alcohol and the opiates has been stronger, in these millions, than the love of God, of home, of children; even of life. Their cry was not for liberty or death; it was for death preceded by enslavement. There is a paradox here, and a mystery. Why should such multitudes of men and women be so ready to sacrifice themselves for a cause so utterly hopeless and in ways so painful and so profoundly humiliating?
            To this riddle there is, of course, no simple or single answer. Human beings are immensely complicated creatures, living simultaneously in a half dozen different worlds. Each individual is unique and, in a number of respects, unlike all the other members of the species. None of our motives is unmixed, none of our actions can be traced back to a single source and, in any group we care to study, behavior patterns that are observably similar may be the result of many constellations of dissimilar causes.
            Thus, there are some alcoholics who seem to have been biochemically predestined to alcoholism. (Among rats, as Prof. Roger Williams, of the University of Texas, has shown, some are born drunkards; some are born teetotalers and will never touch the stuff.) Other alcoholics have been foredoomed not by some inherited defect in their biochemical make-up, but by their neurotic reactions to distressing events in their childhood or adolescence. Again, others embark upon their course of slow suicide as a result of mere imitation and good fellowship because they have made such an "excellent adjustment to their group" — a process which, if the group happens to be criminal, idiotic or merely ignorant, can bring only disaster to the well-adjusted individual. Nor must we forget that large class of addicts who have taken to drugs or drink in order to escape from physical pain. Aspirin, let us remember, is a very recent invention. Until late in the Victorian era, "poppy and mandragora," along with henbane and ethyl alcohol, were the only pain relievers available to civilized man. Toothache, arthritis and neuralgia could, and frequently did, drive men and women to become opium addicts.
            De Quincey, for example, first resorted to opium in order to relieve "excruciating rheumatic pains of the head." He swallowed his poppy and, an hour later, "What a resurrection from the lowest depths of the inner spirit! What an apocalypse!" And it was not merely that he felt no more pain. "This negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened up before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. . . Here was the secret of happiness, about which the philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered."
            "Resurrection, apocalypse, divine enjoyment, happiness. . ." De Quincey's words lead us to the very heart of our paradoxical mystery. The problem of drug addiction and excessive drinking is not merely a matter of chemistry and psychopathology, of relief from pain and conformity with a bad society. It is also a problem in metaphysics — a problem, one might almost say, in theology. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James has touched on these metaphysical aspects of addiction:

            The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties in human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates and says no. Drunkenness expands, unites and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things into the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only through the fleeting earlier phases of what, in its totality, is so degrading a poison. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

            William James was not the first to detect a likeness between drunkenness and the mystical and premystical states. On the day of Pentecost there were people who explained the strange behavior of the disciples by saying, "These men are full of new wine."
            Peter soon undeceived them: "These are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh."
            And it is not only by "the dry critics of the sober hour" that the state of God-intoxication has been likened to drunkenness. In their efforts to express the inexpressible, the great mystics themselves have done the same. Thus, St. Theresa of Avila tells us that she "regards the center of our soul as a cellar, into which God admits us as and when it pleases Him, so as to intoxicate us with the delicious wine of His grace."
            Every fully developed religion exists simultaneously on several different levels. It exists as a set of abstract concepts about the world and its governance. It exists as a set of rites and sacraments, as a traditional method for manipulating the symbols, by means of which beliefs about the cosmic order are expressed. It exists as the feelings of love, fear and devotion evoked by this manipulation of symbols.
            And finally it exists as a special kind of feeling or intuition — a sense of the oneness of all things in their divine principle, a realization (to use the language of Hindu theology) that "thou art That," a mystical experience of what seems self-evidently to be union with God.
            The ordinary waking consciousness is a very useful and, on most occasions, an indispensable state of mind; but it is by no means the only form of consciousness, nor in all circumstances the best. Insofar as he transcends his ordinary self and his ordinary mode of awareness, the mystic is able to enlarge his vision, to look more deeply into the unfathomable miracle of existence.
            The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life.
            In hell, a great religious poet has written, the punishment of the lost is to be "their sweating selves, but worse." On earth we are not worse than we are; we are merely our sweating selves, period.
            Alas, that is quite bad enough. We love ourselves to the point of idolatry; but we also intensely dislike ourselves — we find ourselves unutterably boring. Correlated with this distaste for trie idolatrously worshiped self, there is in all of us a desire, sometimes latent, sometimes conscious and passionately expressed, to escape trom the prison of our individuality, an urge to self-transcendence. It is to this urge that we owe mystical theology, spiritual exercises and yoga — to this, too, that we owe alcoholism and drug addiction.
            Modern pharmacology has given us a host of new synthetics, but in the field of the naturally occurring mind changers it has made no radical discoveries. All the botanical sedatives, stimulants, vision revealers, happiness promoters and cosmic-consciousness arousers were found out thousands of years ago, before the dawn of history.
            In many societies at many levels of civilization attempts have been made to fuse drug intoxication with God intoxication. In ancient Greece, for example, ethyl alcohol had its place in the established religion. Dionysus, or Bacchus, as he was often called, was a true divinity. His worshipers addressed him as Lusios, "Liberator," or as Theoinos, "God-wine." The latter name telescopes fermented grape juice and the supernatural into a single pentecostal experience. "Born a god," writes Euripides, "Bacchus is poured out as a libation to the gods, and through him men receive good." Unfortunately they also receive harm. The blissful experience of self-transcendence which alcohol makes possible has to be paid for, and the price is exorbitantly high.
            Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures. Even more unsatisfactory has been the policy of complete toleration and unrestricted availability. In England, during the first years of the eighteenth century, cheap untaxed gin — "drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two-pence" — threatened society with complete demoralization. A century later, opium, in the form of laudanum, was reconciling the victims of the Industrial Revolution to their lot — but at an appalling cost in terms of addiction, illness and early death. Today most civilized societies follow a course between the two extremes of total prohibition and total toleration. Certain mind-changing drugs, such as alcohol, are permitted and made available to the public on payment of a very high tax, which tends to restrict their consumption. Other mind changers are unobtainable except under doctors' orders — or illegally from a dope pusher. In this way the problem is kept within manageable bounds. It is most certainly not solved. In their ceaseless search for self-transcendence, millions of would-be mystics become addicts, commit scores of thousands of crimes and are involved in hundreds of thousands of avoidable accidents.
            Do we have to go on in this dismal way indefinitely? Up until a few years ago, the answer to such a question would have been a rueful "Yes, we do." Today, thanks to recent developments in biochemistry and pharmacology, we are offered a workable alternative. We see that it may soon be possible for us to do something better in the way of chemical self-transcendence than what we have been doing so ineptly for the last seventy or eighty centuries.
            Is it possible for a powerful drug to be completely harmless? Perhaps not. But the physiological cost can certainly be reduced to the point where it becomes negligible. There are powerful mind changers which do their work without damaging the taker's psychophysical organism and without inciting him to behave like a criminal or a lunatic. Biochemistry and pharmacology are just getting into their stride. Within a few years there will probably be dozens of powerful but — physiologically and socially speaking — very inexpensive mind changers on the market.
            In view of what we already have in the way of powerful but nearly harmless drugs; in view, above all, of what unquestionably we are very soon going to have — we ought to start immediately to give some serious thought to the problem of the new mind changers. How ought they to be used? How can they be abused? Will human beings be better and happier for their discovery? Or worse and more miserable?
            The matter requires to be examined from many points of view. It is simultaneously a question for biochemists and physicians, for psychologists and social anthropologists, for legislators and law-enforcement officers. And finally it is an ethical question and a religious question. Sooner or later — and the sooner, the better — the various specialists concerned will have to meet, discuss and then decide, in the light of the best available evidence and the most imaginative kind of foresight, what should be done. Meanwhile let us take a preliminary look at this many-faceted problem.
            Last year American physicians wrote 48,000,000 prescriptions for tranquilizing drugs, many of which have been refilled, probably more than once. The tranquilizers are the best known of the new, nearly harmless mind changers. They can be used by most people, not indeed with complete impunity, but at a reasonably low physiological cost. Their enormous popularity bears witness to the fact that a great many people dislike both their environment and "their sweating selves." Under tranquilizers the degree of their self-transcendence is not very great; but it is enough to make all the difference, in many cases, between misery and contentment.
            In theory, tranquilizers should be given only to persons suffering from rather severe forms of neurosis or psychosis. In practice, unfortunately, many physicians have been carried away by the current pharmacological fashion and are prescribing tranquilizers to all and sundry. The history of medical fashions, it may be remarked, is at least as grotesque as the history of fashions in women's hats — at least as grotesque and, since human lives are at stake, considerably more tragic. In the present case, millions of patients who had no real need of the tranquilizers have been given the pills by their doctors and have learned to resort to them in every predicament, however triflingly uncomfortable. This is very bad medicine and, from the pill taker's point of view, dubious morality and poor sense.
            There are circumstances in which even the healthy are justified in resorting to the chemical control of negative emotions. If you really can't keep your temper, let a tranquilizer keep it for you. But for healthy people to resort to a chemical mind changer every time they feel annoyed or anxious or tense is neither sensible nor right. Too much tension and anxiety can reduce a man's efficiency — but so can too little. There are many occasions when it is entirely proper for us to feel concerned, when an excess of placidity might reduce our chances of dealing effectively with a ticklish situation. On these occasions, tension mitigated and directed from within by the psychological methods of self-control is preferable from every point of view to complacency imposed from without by the methods of chemical control.
            And now let us consider the case — not, alas, a hypothetical case — of two societies competing with each other. In Society A, tranquilizers are available by prescription and at a rather stiff price — which means, in practice, that their use is confined to that rich and influential minority which provides the society with its leadership. This minority of leading citizens consumes several billions of the complacency-producing pills every year. In Society B, on the other hand, the tranquilizers are not so freely available, and the members of the influential minority do not resort, on the slightest provocation, to the chemical control of what may be necessary and productive tension. Which of these two competing societies is likely to win the race? A society whose leaders make an excessive use of soothing syrups is in danger of falling behind a society whose leaders are not overtranquilized.
            Now let us consider another kind of drug — still undiscovered, but probably just around the corner — a drug capable of making people feel happy in situations where they would normally feel miserable. Such a drug would be a blessing, but a blessing fraught with grave political dangers. By making harmless chemical euphoria freely available, a dictator could reconcile an entire population to a state of affairs to which self-respecting human beings ought not to be reconciled. Despots have always found it necessary to supplement force by political or religious propaganda. In this sense the pen is mightier than the sword. But mightier than either the pen or the sword is the pill. In mental hospitals it has been found that chemical restraint is far more effective than strait jackets or psychiatry. The dictatorships of tomorrow will deprive men of their freedom, but will give them in exchange a happiness none the less real, as a subjective experience, for being chemically induced. The pursuit of happiness is one of the traditional rights of man; unfortunately, the achievement of happiness may turn out to be incompatible with another of man's rights — namely, liberty.
            It is quite possible, however, that pharmacology will restore with one hand what it takes away with the other. Chemically induced euphoria could easily become a threat to individual liberty; but chemically induced vigor and chemically heightened intelligence could easily be liberty's strongest bulwark. Most of us function at about 15 per cent of capacity. How can we step up our lamentably low efficiency?
            Two methods are available — the educational and the biochemical. We can take adults and children as they are and give them a much better training than we are giving them now. Or, by appropriate biochemical methods, we can transform them into superior individuals. If these superior individuals are given a superior education, the results will be revolutionary. They will be startling even if we continue to subject them to the rather poor educational methods at present in vogue. Will it in fact be possible to produce superior individuals by biochemical means? The Russians certainly believe it. They are now halfway through a Five Year Plan to produce "pharmacological substances that normalize higher nervous activity and heighten human capacity for work." Precursors of these future mind improvers are already being experimented with. It has been found, for example, that when given in massive doses some of the vitamins — nicotinic acid and ascorbic acid for example — sometimes produce a certain heightening of psychic energy. A combination of two enzymes — ethylene disulphonate and adenosine triphosphate, which, when injected together, improve carbohydrate metabolism in nervous tissue — may also turn out to be effective.
            Meanwhile good results are being claimed for various new synthetic, nearly harmless stimulants. There is iproniazid, which, according to some authorities, "appears to increase the total amount of psychic energy." Unfortunately, iproniazid in large doses has side effects which in some cases may be extremely serious. Another psychic energizer is an amino alcohol which is thought to increase the body's production of acetylcholine, a substance of prime importance in the functioning of the nervous system. In view of what has already been achieved, it seems quite possible that, within a few years, we may be able to lift ourselves up by our own biochemical bootstraps.
            In the meantime let us all fervently wish the Russians every success in their current pharmacological venture. The discovery of a drug capable of increasing the average individual's psychic energy, and its wide distribution throughout the U.S.S.R., would probably mean the end of Russia's present form of government. Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy. Even in the democratic West we could do with a bit of psychic energizing. Between them, education and pharmacology may do something to offset the effects of that deterioration of our biological material to which geneticists have frequently called attention.
            From these political and ethical considerations let us now pass to the strictly religious problems that will be posed by some of the new mind changers. We can foresee the nature of these future problems by studying the effects of a natural mind changer, which has been used for centuries past in religious worship; I refer to the peyote cactus of Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Peyote contains mescaline — which can now be produced synthetically — and mescaline, in William James' phrase, "stimulates the mystical faculties in human nature" far more powerfully and in a far more enlightening way than alcohol and, what is more, it does so at a physiological and social cost that is negligibly low. Peyote produces self-transcendence in two ways — it introduces the taker into the Other World of visionary experience, and it gives him a sense of solidarity with his fellow worshipers, with human beings at large and with the divine nature of things.
            The effects of peyote can be duplicated by synthetic mescaline and by LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a derivative of ergot. Effective in incredibly small doses, LSD is now being used experimentally by psychotherapists in Europe, in South America, in Canada and the United States. It lowers the barrier between conscious and subconscious and permits the patient to look more deeply and understandingly into the recesses of his own mind. The deepening of self-knowledge takes place against a background of visionary and even mystical experience.
            When administered in the right kind of psychological environment, these chemical mind changers make possible a genuine religious experience. Thus a person who takes LSD or mescaline may suddenly understand — not only intellectually but organically, experientially — the meaning of such tremendous religious affirmations as "God is love," or "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
            It goes without saying that this kind of temporary self-transcendence is no guarantee of permanent enlightenment or a lasting improvement of conduct. It is a "gratuitous grace," which is neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation, but which if properly used, can be enormously helpful to those who have received it. And this is true of all such experiences, whether occurring spontaneously, or as the result of swallowing the right kind of chemical mind changer, or after undertaking a course of "spiritual exercises" or bodily mortification.
            Those who are offended by the idea that the swallowing of a pill may contribute to a genuinely religious experience should remember that all the standard mortifications — fasting, voluntary sleeplessness and self-torture — inflicted upon themselves by the ascetics of every religion for the purpose of acquiring merit, are also, like the mind-changing drugs, powerful devices for altering the chemistry of the body in general and the nervous system in particular. Or consider the procedures generally known as spiritual exercises. The breathing techniques taught by the yogi of India result in prolonged suspensions of respiration. These in turn result in an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood; and the psychological consequence of this is a change in the quality of consciousness. Again, meditations involving long, intense concentration upon a single idea or image may also result — for neurological reasons which I do not profess to understand — in a slowing down of respiration and even in prolonged suspensions of breathing.
            Many ascetics and mystics have practiced their chemistry-changing mortifications and spiritual exercises while living, for longer or shorter periods, as hermits. Now, the life of a hermit, such as Saint Anthony, is a life in which there are very few external stimuli. But as Hebb, John Lilly and other experimental psychologists have recently shown in the laboratory, a person in a limited environment, which provides very few external stimuli, soon undergoes a change in the quality of his consciousness and may transcend his normal self to the point of hearing voices or seeing visions, often extremely unpleasant, like so many of Saint Anthony's visions, but sometimes beatific.
            That men and women can, by physical and chemical means, transcend themselves in a genuinely spiritual way is something which, to the squeamish idealist, seems rather shocking. But, after all, the drug or the physical exercise is not the cause of the spiritual experience; it is only its occasion.
            Writing of William James' experiments with nitrous oxide, Bergson has summed up the whole matter in a few lucid sentences. "The psychic disposition was there, potentially, only waiting a signal to express itself in action. It might have been evoked spiritually by an effort made on its own spiritual level. But it could just as well be brought about materially, by an inhibition of what inhibited it, by the removing of an obstacle; and this effect was the wholly negative one produced by the drug." Where, for any reason, physical or moral, the psychological dispositions are unsatisfactory, the removal of obstacles by a drug or by ascetic practices will result in a negative rather than a positive spiritual experience. Such an infernal experience is extremely distressing, but may also be extremely salutary. There are plenty of people to whom a few hours in hell — the hell that they themselves have done so much to create — could do a world of good.
            Physiologically costless, or nearly costless, stimulators of the mystical faculties are now making their appearance, and many kinds of them will soon be on the market. We can be quite sure that, as and when they become available, they will be extensively used. The urge to self-transcendence is so strong and so general that it cannot be otherwise. In the past, very few people have had spontaneous experiences of a pre-mystical or fully mystical nature; still fewer have been willing to undergo the psychophysical disciplines which prepare an insulated individual for this kind of self-transcendence. The powerful but nearly costless mind changers of the future will change all this completely. Instead of being rare, premystical and mystical experiences will become common. What was once the spiritual privilege of the few will be made available to the many. For the ministers of the world's organized religions, this will raise a number of unprecedented problems. For most people, religion has always been a matter of traditional symbols and of their own emotional, intellectual and ethical response to those symbols. To men and women who have had direct experience of self-transcendence into the mind's Other World of vision and union with the nature of things, a religion of mere symbols is not likely to be very satisfying. The perusal of a page from even the most beautifully written cookbook is no substitute for the eating of dinner. We are exhorted to "taste and see that the Lord is good."
            In one way or another, the world's ecclesiastical authorities will have to come to terms with the new mind changers. They may come to terms with them negatively, by refusing to have anything to do with them. In that case, a psychological phenomenon, potentially of great spiritual value, will manifest itself outside the pale of organized religion. On the other hand, they may choose to come to terms with the mind changers in some positive way — exactly how, I am not prepared to guess.
            My own belief is that, though they may start by being something of an embarrassment, these new mind changers will tend in the long run to deepen the spiritual life of the communities in which they are available. That famous "revival of religion," about which so many people have been talking for so long, will not come about as the result of evangelistic mass meetings or the television appearances of photogenic clergymen. It will come about as the result of biochemical discoveries that will make it possible for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self-transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. And this revival of religion will be at the same time a revolution. From being an activity mainly concerned with symbols, religion will be transformed into an activity concerned mainly with experience and intuition — an everyday mysticism underlying and giving significance to everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties, everyday human relationships.
(From The Saturday Evening Post)




Certain facts about Cervical Cancer among Women in India -
1. Worldwide, cervical cancer is considered to be the second commonest cancer as far as mortality and incidence is concerned and India contributes to about 20-30% of the global burden ie one out of every four women in the world dying of Cervical Cancer is an Indian
2. Cancer killed 5,56,400 people across the country in 2010. The 30-69 age group accounted for 71 per cent (3,95,400) of the deaths
3.. Cervical cancer is the third largest cause of cancer mortality in India after cancers of the mouth & oropharynx, and oesophagus, accounting for nearly 10% of all cancer related deaths in the country (WHO, 2009b). 
4.. Among women, it is the leading cause of cancer mortality, accounting for 26% of all cancer deaths (GLOBOCAN 2002, IARC 2009). According to IARC estimates, mortality from cervical cancer is expected to witness a 79% increase from 74,118 deaths in 2002(203 per day) to 132,745 deaths (364 per day) by 2025 (National Cancer Registry Programme 2009, WHO 2004).
5. The prevalence and burden of cervical cancer is much higher among women of low Socio-Economic Status, as well as among rural women in India (Vallikad, 2006; Kurkue, and Yeole, 2006). The primary reason given for this is lack of access to screening and health services, and lack of awareness of the risk factors of cervical cancer.
6. In USA, the vaccine is available to girls aged 11-12 years. [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (a)]. In the UK, a national HPV vaccination programme has been initiated, offering the vaccine 'Cervarix®' to all girls aged 12-13 [Cancer Research UK (a)] but India still does not have any such programme for prevention of this deadly disease
We are fortunate that DG RTn Uttam Ganguly of our Dist 3291 has taken up the Cause and included awareness against this deadly disease as a District Project. Rotary Clubs in our District 3291 can take a lead in immunizing School going Girls in the Government/ Municipal schools specially in rural & underdeveloped areas by giving them three shots of Gardasil ( Merck) or Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) which create immunity against cervical cancer-causing HPV strains of types 16 and 18 , which currently cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases. 
Cost of each dose is approx Rs 1500 (Cervarix) - Rs 2200 (Gardasil). 
Cost of Immunising 1000 girls comes to around Rs 45 Lakhs( USD 79000) for the vaccine only. Help in the form of Matching grant will help move the project forward.