Daaji cryptically added, “What if God is with you for, let’s say, 24 hours a day? What would you do with him? Are we even capable of doing something with him? That is the crux of the matter. We should be ready and prepared. Unless a person is prepared to receive God duly, nothing significant happens right? What can be defined as a ‘change’ in consciousness? This requires careful thought. If we remain at lower levels of habits then how can we make appropriate use of any opportunity from a higher level?
Daaji went for a walk in the morning and showed his son Marg the Napier grass which is coming up in Kanha. Historically used for fodder, it produces huge biomass and can be harvested multiple times in a year which makes it a good raw material for biofuel production. Napier grass is planted in marginal lands and slopes to increase soil fertility and reduce soil erosion. It is also the main source of paper production in many regions.
It was a day of quiet as Kanha took up its regular rhythms and meditation sessions. Daaji met some practitioners and guests in the evening at his backstage office in the meditation hall. Dr Bijlani, Himanshu Gupta, and the Delhi teacher’s training team led by the regional facilitator Brother Shri V. Srinivasan met and conversed with Daaji on several ongoing projects. Daaji enquired if they had attended meditation. He always gently nudges us in the right direction, no matter what the occasion, it is so heartwarming to observe how he trains his practitioners to reach for the highest and maintain the highest standards of rigor towards one’s practice.
Daaji cited several trees that he felt would grow well in Delhi, such as Singapore Cherries. He felt that the schools in Delhi could grow these unusual trees to interest the children in tree cultivation for a holistic education that would draw them closer to nature.
He enquired about the ongoing AIIMS project of research related to the Brighter Mind’s training, and its impact on the specific area of the brain which would play an active role while we are experiencing a moment of intuition. Speaking of the effect of the brighter minds training, Daaji coined the word para-sensitive concerning the abilities developed by these children.
The conversation veered from the education of children to the work of authors such as Shri Aurobindo, Rupert Steiner, and Hazrat Inayat Khan on the same subject. Daaji explored this idea of how to develop a powerful inner life to be able to navigate every stage of evolution appropriately, and how children must be given a suitable upbringing to this effect.
He cryptically added, “What if God is with you for, let’s say, 24 hours a day? What would you do with him? Are we even capable of doing something with him? That is the crux of the matter. We should be ready and prepared. Unless a person is prepared to receive God duly, nothing significant happens right? What can be defined as a ‘change’ in consciousness? This requires careful thought. If we remain at lower levels of habits then how can we make appropriate use of any opportunity from a higher level? It is like when multinational corporate firms employ engineers from India by the dozen. These are youth from the backcountry who have never traveled beyond state borders and suddenly find themselves hired and traveling to Silicon Valley where they are put up in four-star and five-star hotels in the US.
They have never even seen a standing toilet in their lives and use them in positions of squatting on them like the ones back home in India. They walk around in their traditional Indian wear of lungis just as they would back home because they have no idea how to blend into their new life. Just like that, imagine that the consciousness of a very highly evolved person wraps itself around you, brushes against you like a bubble of air. Would you be able to absorb its qualities into yourself? If you are not ready it will simply move on. We are too busy playing with ourselves. We often think about past karmas, but we forget the cognates that we are creating in the present. Present desires also create patterns and impressions. Perhaps even more dangerous ones than those in our past.
Let us keep in mind that the future samskaras where we keep desiring more and more, will keep us on the grinding wheel of birth and rebirth. That is why Babuji’s genius statement in the prayer is so critically important — ‘We are yet but slaves of wishes.’ We may not yet be fully cognizant of the effects of these wishes but they are very dangerous.”
Just as he was standing up to leave, a group of enthusiastic abhyasis from Pune led by the regional facilitator Sister Anjali Bapat with her family and her friends from Chennai lovingly approached him. He sat down and began speaking with them about the plasma water project. He had a long discussion with Dr Ravi Kulkarni, Chairman and Managing Director of the Elkay group of companies, Pune who was accompanied by Mrs Alka Kulkarni, Director Elkay group of companies, Pune. He had a pleasant exchange with Smt. Jayshree Vivek who is a Fitness consultant and member of the Green Goddesses Group of ecological women activists from Chennai. Young Rishabh Bapat who is doing PhD in Neuroscience from the National Brain Research Center, Gurgaon mentioned that his thesis concerns consciousness. So Daaji asked him, what is consciousness? Can you define it in your own words? The young person brilliantly answered Daaji and he asked him to share a soft copy of his thesis with him whenever possible by email.
Daaji explained to Dr. Kulkarni how effective plasma water is compared to normal water when sprinkled on seeds. He said, “Plasma water is water which has passed through magnets and electricity so that it collects negative charge. Because of this negative charge, even if we don't know exactly what are the physiological changes which occur in the seeds, the size is almost three to four times the normal growth which is observable in just four days. It would seem that if we use plasma water, we don't need pesticides to protect it later. We have experimented with plasma water on chia seeds, on moong seeds, on valor seeds ( A type of flat bean also called helda beans, widely used in Gujarati cuisine in India), as well as on sunflower seeds. The growth is triple or four times that of the normal one. We have also done some experiments using bio charcoal which we saturate with fertiliser and then use at the base of the plant. We see such growth in that case too.
It is fascinating - and that also at practically no expense. We are generating a lot of active charcoal here. We have installed here the apparatus called KonTiki which produces this charcoal. It has been approved by the Ithaka Institute of Switzerland. If you produce one ton of bio charcoal you get two carbon credits which is equivalent to twenty-five thousand rupees. Compare that to the actual cost of producing one ton of charcoal, which may vary, say it is between ten to fifteen thousand rupees, if at all. Even that may be too high in fact. So see how much good can be done with this technology. We are educating farmers regarding these practices when they visit Kanha Shantivanam.
Further, we should try and bring all these technologies, like charcoal and plasma water to farmers of a few villages. Generally, people are rather skeptical about such new ideas. So it is critical that some people try and then after they find it interesting they will help it spread further. I think this technology is a game changer. I have sprayed it on the olive trees in front of my house. We sprayed it once with a 50/50 solution of water and plasma water and 90% of that problem which the tree had, was gone overnight. So you don't need chemicals anymore then. We have that machine here, we can show you if you would like to see it. It is made by a German company.”
There was a proposition of how another way to create the same effect in water could also achieve the same thing. Daaji invited an experiment to be conducted - UV water vs Plasma water. As always, it is interesting to observe how Daaji is so inviting to new ideas.
After the discussion, Daaji took Dr. Ravi Kulkarni to show him the Plasma water machine installed in Kanha Shantivanam premises. After a brief discussion there Daaji then dropped him off at the Pearl Hotel before returning home himself.
