Vaastu Shastra (Science of Building House) Posted by Deepesh , Thursday, August 06, 2009 at 3:58 PM, in Labels: ancient scriptures, bed positions, chinese fengshui, east, elements of the universe, five elements, indian architecture, inner peace, north, shastras, sleeping positions, south, vaastu shastra, west

Vaastu Shastra is often confused with Chinese Fengshui. But now with the cultural globalization, the Chinese Fengshui has also entered Indian homes, and now we see people changing their house arrangements, sleeping positions, and you see Toads, Laughing buddha's, and other similar things like fortune bamboos and wind chimes in place of Indian Gods like Godess of Wealth - Mahalakshmi, God of Destruction of Difficulties - Ganesha and so onnn...
Now, the recent days have seen much debate between these two ancient Shastras or simply put as Sciences. The Fengshui camp have been mud slinging Vastu shastra by saying it to be very old fashioned, and outdated. While the Vastu has been saying Fengshui to be unorthodox, and unusable.
Vaastu Shastra emerged in India about 6000-3000 BC, and it is mentioned in the ancient scriptures like the Vedas, and even Epics of Mahabharata, and Ramayana. The Ancient Indian Architecture was built on these very guidelines of Vaastu Shastra, may it be Temples or Palaces. The inner peace or "Shaanti" you feel while in any of those old temples comes from the vibrations you would acknowledge whilst in those places. Its all due to Vaastu which literally means "To Live".
The Origins of Fengshui, is pretty recent compared to Vaastu, and is supposed to be penned during the Han Dynasty - about 900BC to 25AD or so.

Vastu Shastra is based on the five basic elements of the universe in which we all live (All Free). These basic elements are Akash (Ether), Prithvi (EARTH), Paani (WATER), Agni (FIRE), and Vayu (WIND). Akash is usually mistaken as Sky the literal meaning while in Vaastu it refers to Ether or a combination of earth's Magnetic field & Sun's Rays.
Fengshui means Wind & Water. It makes use of another set of five elements - earth, fire, water, wood and metal.
Both the sciences relates to the same Idea - living in harmony with the environments and seeking equilibrium with it. But, Vastu and Fengshui Operates very differently in the way to achieve it. Might be due to the fact that they have originated in two geographically and culturally different areas, and different times.
I'm a Big fan of Vaastu Shastra than Fengshui, might be because that made more sense, and felt the effects of the same. All Vaastu rules are very much scientifically explainable, and really makes Technological sense.

Some Tips From Vaastu

1. The main entrance should be in the East or North but it should not be in front of the compound wall.
2. The wall of the house in the North-Eastern side should have minimum height.
3. If the wall of the house in the East is tall, it stalls the entry of prosperity, the Goddess Lakshmi, into the house. Therefore, it should be small in height.
4. The southern side of the house should be as tall and heavy as possible.
   In any room of the house the beam or column should not cross in the center.
5. Terrace or balcony in the house should be either in the East or the North.
6. A well, pole or a temple should not be there in front of the main entrance of the house.
7. The slope of the house should be towards East, North or North-East.
   Similarly, the slope of the plinth also should be towards East, North or North-East.
8. The height of the plinth should be maximum in the direction of South-West.
9. The main entrance of the house should not be in front of that of the opposite house.
10. The house should be equipped with the protective wall.
11. The upper storeys of the house should be constructed on the Southern or Western part.
12. The Master bedroom should be in the South-West, and should not be used by children
13. The cupboard in the wall should be the Southern or Western part direction of the house.

Now having said the above, lets do some detailing about sleeping positions according to Vaastu, and its scientific reasons
Head to North
The Vastu sleeping position with head in the North direction is strongly opposed. Never sleep with the top of your head pointing to the north and feet pointing to the south. Brings terrible dreams and disturbed sleep. It brings negative vibrations while you sleep. Loss of sound sleep pertains to irritability, frustration and emotional instability. So your physical and mental health will suffer. In fact only a dead body is kept with the head pointing the North and the feet towards the South.
The Science - The blood in the body contains iron (Haemoglobin - Hb or Hgb)), making the body magnetic with the positive polarity in the head. So its supposed that head represents the North pole while the feet are the South pole. When you sleep with your head to the North, these two positive polarities repel each other, disrupting the flow of blood and affecting your sleep and health. Hence one should never sleep with the head in the North.
South:
Vastu Shastra highly recommends this direction as your usual sleeping position with head towards the South. This is believed to provide sound sleep & health and increases the wealth and prosperity in the household. Sound sleep tends to develop better will power, calm mind, and so better behavior.
East:
East is the direction of knowledge and enlightenment; from where Sun rises. Sleeping with head resting in the East enhances memory, health and spiritual inclination. It is usually advised by Vastu Shastra Consultants to plan the children's room in such a way that their Vastu sleeping direction comes out to be east. This leads to higher concentration and retention power.
The Science - Early morning Sun's rays are proved to be beneficial to one's health. It helps production of Vitamin-D which helps in absorption of Calcium and Phosphates. This inturn helps better brain development.
West:
Sleeping with one’s head in the West is good for people who do not permanently reside in the house, like guests and married daughters, in their parents’ house. Though this is not a very advisable sleeping position, Shastra says sleeping with head towards West might cause disturbed sleep due to nightmares, or kinds of illness and tendency towards violence.
A small E-book which would help understand Vaastu Shastra is here for Download

Based on Articles from

• http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Vastu_and_Feng_Shui/id/2067
• http://www.stephen-knapp.com/vastu_shastra.htm
• http://architectureideas.info/2008/11/vastu-shastra-guidelines-bedrooms/

CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA Posted by Deepesh , Tuesday, June 02, 2009 at 10:47 PM, in Labels: America, British, Christianity, colonization, evangelization, India, Pope, racism, spain

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic, hoping to find a westward sea route to China and India. His mission, supported by Spain’s monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I, aimed at evangelizing and colonization. Coulombs wrote in his journal, “Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith.” So holy that Columbus behaved like “a cruel and greedy tyrant with a brutal disregard for humanity.’’ According to historians commenting on documents recently discovered at Valladolid (north-western Spain), where he died 500 years ago. But the twin objectives were amply fulfilled in the following decades, in the form of vast riches and the Christianization of all natives.

From the latter’s point of view, however, the picture was very different: they lost their land their land, their freedom, their honor, their lives, and their culture. As soon as they set foot on the “New World,” colonizers indulged in speakable cruelty on those they called “Indians.” In his 1906 Christopher Columbus and the New World of his Discovery, historian Filson Young wrote:
“Lust and bloody cruelty, of a kind not merely indescribable but unrealizable by sane men and women, drenched the once happy island [Hispaniola] with anguish and terror. And in payment for it the Spaniards undertook to teach the heathen the Christian religion.’’
Young then narrates the courageous but hopeless rebellion by a few Indian chiefs, which resulted in the wholesale slaughter of their clans. “After that,’’ he continues, “there was never any more resistance; it was simply a case of extermination, which the Spaniards easily accomplished by cutting of the heads of women as they rode through the villages. Thus, in the twelve years since the discovery of Columbus, between half a million and a million natives, perished; and as the Spanish colonization spread afterwards from island to island, and the banner of civilization and Christianity was borne farther abroad throughout the Indies, the same hideous process was continued. In Cuba, in Jamaica, throughout the Antilles, the cross and the sword, the whip-lash are only Gospel advanced together; wherever the Host was consecrated, hideous cries of agony to and suffering broke forth; until happily, in the fullness of time, the dire business was complete, and the whole of the people who had inhabited this garden of the world were exterminated and their blood and race wiped from the face of the earth.’’

A few voices protest were heard, notably that of the Spanish priest Bartoleme de Las Cases rightly traced the atrocities to greed: “The reason why the Christians have killed and destroyed such an infinite number of souls is that they have been moved by their wish for gold and their desire to enrich themselves in a very short time.’’ Colonization was, he wrote,’’ born in blood and fire,’’ and he feared that Spain-even the Church-may have to suffer divine retribution for the black deeds of the conquistadors.

Herman Cortes with the Aztecs of Mexico and Francisco Pizzaro with the Incas of Peru continued the streak of bloodshed, with varying degrees, and always with the Bible in hand. Aztec labourers were worked to death in Mexico’s gold mines; in Oaxaca, the principal mining town, “the ground was so bleached with human bones that one could not go in that direction without stepping upon skeletons.’’ Historian Edward Dahlberg wrote in The Gold of Ophir. “Pedro de Alvarado, the lieutenant of Cortes, annihilated four to five million [Mayan] natives in the peninsula of Guatemala and Yucatan within a few years…. Does Soto lop off the heads of Indian couriers because he was too fatigued to remove their iron collars? Gonzalo Pizarro [half brother of Francisco] threw numerous Incas to the dogs…’’ In The Conquest of America. Tzvetan Todorov writes: “If the word genocide has ever been applied to a situation with some accuracy, this is here the case. It constitutes a record not only in relative terms (a destruction on the order of 90 percent or more), but also in absolute terms, since we are speaking of a population diminution estimated at 70 million human lives. None of the great massacres of the twentieth century can be compared to this hecatomb.’’ Besides the Spanish, other colonizers from Western Europe took part in the bloody conquest. Along with human lives, culture was snuffed out: thousand of Mayan codices (manuscripts) were consigned to the flames as they could only be the work of the devil. The environment also suffered, with forests laid waste and traditional agriculture destroyed.

Historian David Stannard uses a similar language in his American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (1992): “The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.’’ Stannard, advances 100 million as the number of indigenous victims right up to the nineteenth century; asking “What kind of people do such horrendous things to others?’’, he answers squarely: Christians, tracing the problem to their attitudes towards sex, race and war. Claims of racial superiority as well as exclusive ownership of the truth in the form of Christianity certainly provided convenient pretexts to the colonizers.

In fact, back in Spain, to justify the treatment of Amerindians, an influential Jesuit maintained that they were “inferior to the Spaniards just as children are to adults, women to men and indeed, one might even say, as apes are to men.’’ Some asserted that they had no soul; while others were sure they had no intelligence. In view of Catholic theology, therefore. Indians were born slaves (similar arguments will later be used towards the Blacks.) Las Cases again rose to the occasion and confronted these views in 1550 at the famous Council of Valladolid. Arguments were heard by theologians for ever a year, during which Las Cases hammered the point that “All the nations of the world are human and all share in the same definition: they are rational beings. All have intellect and will, as created in God’s image and similitude.’’ Las Cases resolutely went against the colonial stream, and eventually won the debate through his learning and deep conviction that Native Americans had a right to be treated as free men. Though it would make little immediate difference to their lives, it was an important victory in the realm of humanist ideas.

At the age of eighty-one, still gnawed by anguish at the fate of Amerindians, Las Cases wrote to the Pope boldly demanding his urgent intervention to restore their rights, as the suffering inflicted on them may otherwise bring about “ the damnation and destruction of the Church.’’ He asked the pope to excommunicate “all those who affirm that wars against the infidels are just if waged to combat idolatry, or for the convenience of spreading the Gospel, specially in regard to those infields who have never injured or are not injuring us.’’