Sunday, January 16, 2011
Love, by Lao Tzu
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~Lao TzuTen
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Sri Aurobindo on Existence
"Our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of other selves, of the same self in other beings, and of that which exceeds both own-self and other-self."
Friday, October 30, 2009
Documenting Tomatis, Near Death Experience, Buddha on a Lake, Kabir
On a recent trip outside Auroville, i was amazed at the number of times people asked me : "But are you documenting all this?"... One person even went so far as to say that Aurovilians who didn't document their work should be given 1 year to do so or else kicked out of Auroville! :-) Needing Auroville as my life's breath, i decided : This is It, have gotto start writing!
X was a little boy of 5 who came to us in 2008. He had received a diagnosis of "Autistic with Mild PDD" from the Spastics Society of Karnataka. He had an enormous difficulty communicating with other kids. Basic touch with other children was problematic. Basically, he only communicated with adults. That communication was often repetitive- echolalia. He repeated questions. When he got an answer, it was as though he hadn't heard anything at all; he just repeated the question again. He had a difficulty communicating what he wanted with his parents also.... there were often bouts of extreme frustration and screaming, when he could not communicate what he wanted and when the parents could not understand what exactly he was trying to say. Something that other kids and the rest of us take completely for granted - a simple "I am hungry," was impossible for him to say. The mother was worried about the language barrier. The little fellow spoke only Kannada and very little English. I told her not to worry, we would manage with her translation and told her to bring him for a Listening Test (LT). At the first LT, i will never forget how the mother literally rubbed his eyes in an attempt to bring him into the here and now, because he was off somewhere, in some other world. He was the cutest little fellow, with the cutest little haircut. We started the Tomatis Listening with them. The first breakthrough came at the end of the first block of 3 weeks. He said in Kannada to his mother " I am hungry, give me rice puffs". When i heard that, i knew, the first step had been made. After that it was a long step by step process. The parents and sometimes the mother with the grandparents, had to keep coming back to Auroville every 2 months or so. Little by little, he started expressing himself more and more. At the end of another block, he made a big breakthrough and hugged another kid. After that, there was no stopping him. In the Nursery school, he started playing with the other kids in the sandbox. He even went overboard, kissing the other kids! The level of commitment of the two parents, was simply incredible. I was amazed by them. Their patience, their commitment, their willingness and openness to try, their trust, the lengths they went to for him. When we got our new office, i was able to do Night Therapy with them. Night Therapy allows us to make interventions which would otherwise be difficult to make during the day. The little fellow would arrive at 8pm in his pyjamas and go to sleep in one of the rooms with his headphones on. He really looked forward to listening to Mozart. Sometimes there would be an occasional tear or two. Sometimes his face looked so sad, as though he were carrying a deep sadness from far away. But little by little, that started to go away too. As we worked, he started to get more of a sense of himself, more confidence, more expression...
And then recently, on their last block this year, the parents told me the good news : in order to enter a new school, he had to go through a series of psychological tests. Guess what? he was officially declared "No Longer Autistic"!
Wow! There are just no words to describe the utter joy of hearing that.
.....
But i must not forget one of our earlier successes > a man suffering from depression who had been addicted to the anti-depressive "Temesta" prescribed often in France for depressives, who desperately wanted to free himself from this addiction.....he never had finished anything that he had started in his life, had a very low opinion about himself.... he stopped short in the middle of his Tomatis program and just upped and went to France overnight, cutting his program short....we took it as a failure. But then, he contacted us some months later, saying he wanted to come back, and he did, for the entire time this time, including the breaks, sticking through it, until he was able to sleep and to function in his life without Temesta. Something he had been trying unsuccessfully to do for 4 full years. He said " Tomatis gave me the greatest gift"... recently i received an email from him, a massmail he had sent out : he was raising funds to produce his own record album!
....
Then there are others. But that's enough documentation to start with!!!!
Near Death Experience
Tapas and i nearly died in a car accident in Ladakh this past month. We were in a taxi, one of those Mahindra Xylos, a solid car, climbing uphill coming to a curve in the road, when suddenly we found another car coming at us at top speed, totally on the wrong side of the road, viz, on our side!!! I thought : "This is impossible; this isn't happening, not to us". I wanted to protect Tapas. Before i could even do anything, the car had hit, and the entire car shook, and turned around and came to a halt. There was glass everywhere. Tapas was groaning with pain holding her knee. My glasses were all wonky, and my hat somewhere. The side of the car - Tapas's side - was all smashed in. The tyre had burst with the metal broken. The sideboard had separated from the car and was sitting on the ground. A whole huge spring had rolled off from underneath. How we survived that impact, is a real miracle. Mother - the Divine - must have wanted us to continue the work we do, so she saved us. And i will never forget our physical saviours, Martin and Bettina, architects, who stopped their car and helped us out. Bettina whipped out a super duper bandage for Tapas' knee, and they gave us a ride to Leh. We had an uncanny feeling that somehow we were supposed to meet them. We talked about Auroville all the way to Leh.
Ladakh is simply beautiful. Incredible Nature. And one of the most incredible sights i've ever seen in my life, is Tso Moriri, at over 4200m altitude, surrounded by snow covered mountains... shimmering in the morning sun, turquoise and deep blue, waters transparent.... both Tapas and i experienced Buddha on the Lake. Quiet Mind. I find it incredible that both of us could experience the same thing - and its very hard to put in words, but Buddha, was on the Lake.... the Lake itself was Buddha and the image or presence of Buddha was hovering on the Lake. We didn't say anything to each other then, but we realised when we talked about it later > we both had experienced it. But then, this Ladakh trip was really very special.
Kabir
Shabnam Virmani has the most incredible voice. Please go to www.kabirproject.org and order some fantastic CDs. I can write a lot about Shabnam and Kabir, but for now, let me just share that we are going to try one of the songs that she recorded - a beautiful lilting thoroughly peace-inducing song - in our Tomatis work.
X was a little boy of 5 who came to us in 2008. He had received a diagnosis of "Autistic with Mild PDD" from the Spastics Society of Karnataka. He had an enormous difficulty communicating with other kids. Basic touch with other children was problematic. Basically, he only communicated with adults. That communication was often repetitive- echolalia. He repeated questions. When he got an answer, it was as though he hadn't heard anything at all; he just repeated the question again. He had a difficulty communicating what he wanted with his parents also.... there were often bouts of extreme frustration and screaming, when he could not communicate what he wanted and when the parents could not understand what exactly he was trying to say. Something that other kids and the rest of us take completely for granted - a simple "I am hungry," was impossible for him to say. The mother was worried about the language barrier. The little fellow spoke only Kannada and very little English. I told her not to worry, we would manage with her translation and told her to bring him for a Listening Test (LT). At the first LT, i will never forget how the mother literally rubbed his eyes in an attempt to bring him into the here and now, because he was off somewhere, in some other world. He was the cutest little fellow, with the cutest little haircut. We started the Tomatis Listening with them. The first breakthrough came at the end of the first block of 3 weeks. He said in Kannada to his mother " I am hungry, give me rice puffs". When i heard that, i knew, the first step had been made. After that it was a long step by step process. The parents and sometimes the mother with the grandparents, had to keep coming back to Auroville every 2 months or so. Little by little, he started expressing himself more and more. At the end of another block, he made a big breakthrough and hugged another kid. After that, there was no stopping him. In the Nursery school, he started playing with the other kids in the sandbox. He even went overboard, kissing the other kids! The level of commitment of the two parents, was simply incredible. I was amazed by them. Their patience, their commitment, their willingness and openness to try, their trust, the lengths they went to for him. When we got our new office, i was able to do Night Therapy with them. Night Therapy allows us to make interventions which would otherwise be difficult to make during the day. The little fellow would arrive at 8pm in his pyjamas and go to sleep in one of the rooms with his headphones on. He really looked forward to listening to Mozart. Sometimes there would be an occasional tear or two. Sometimes his face looked so sad, as though he were carrying a deep sadness from far away. But little by little, that started to go away too. As we worked, he started to get more of a sense of himself, more confidence, more expression...
And then recently, on their last block this year, the parents told me the good news : in order to enter a new school, he had to go through a series of psychological tests. Guess what? he was officially declared "No Longer Autistic"!
Wow! There are just no words to describe the utter joy of hearing that.
.....
But i must not forget one of our earlier successes > a man suffering from depression who had been addicted to the anti-depressive "Temesta" prescribed often in France for depressives, who desperately wanted to free himself from this addiction.....he never had finished anything that he had started in his life, had a very low opinion about himself.... he stopped short in the middle of his Tomatis program and just upped and went to France overnight, cutting his program short....we took it as a failure. But then, he contacted us some months later, saying he wanted to come back, and he did, for the entire time this time, including the breaks, sticking through it, until he was able to sleep and to function in his life without Temesta. Something he had been trying unsuccessfully to do for 4 full years. He said " Tomatis gave me the greatest gift"... recently i received an email from him, a massmail he had sent out : he was raising funds to produce his own record album!
....
Then there are others. But that's enough documentation to start with!!!!
Near Death Experience
Tapas and i nearly died in a car accident in Ladakh this past month. We were in a taxi, one of those Mahindra Xylos, a solid car, climbing uphill coming to a curve in the road, when suddenly we found another car coming at us at top speed, totally on the wrong side of the road, viz, on our side!!! I thought : "This is impossible; this isn't happening, not to us". I wanted to protect Tapas. Before i could even do anything, the car had hit, and the entire car shook, and turned around and came to a halt. There was glass everywhere. Tapas was groaning with pain holding her knee. My glasses were all wonky, and my hat somewhere. The side of the car - Tapas's side - was all smashed in. The tyre had burst with the metal broken. The sideboard had separated from the car and was sitting on the ground. A whole huge spring had rolled off from underneath. How we survived that impact, is a real miracle. Mother - the Divine - must have wanted us to continue the work we do, so she saved us. And i will never forget our physical saviours, Martin and Bettina, architects, who stopped their car and helped us out. Bettina whipped out a super duper bandage for Tapas' knee, and they gave us a ride to Leh. We had an uncanny feeling that somehow we were supposed to meet them. We talked about Auroville all the way to Leh.
Ladakh is simply beautiful. Incredible Nature. And one of the most incredible sights i've ever seen in my life, is Tso Moriri, at over 4200m altitude, surrounded by snow covered mountains... shimmering in the morning sun, turquoise and deep blue, waters transparent.... both Tapas and i experienced Buddha on the Lake. Quiet Mind. I find it incredible that both of us could experience the same thing - and its very hard to put in words, but Buddha, was on the Lake.... the Lake itself was Buddha and the image or presence of Buddha was hovering on the Lake. We didn't say anything to each other then, but we realised when we talked about it later > we both had experienced it. But then, this Ladakh trip was really very special.
Kabir
Shabnam Virmani has the most incredible voice. Please go to www.kabirproject.org and order some fantastic CDs. I can write a lot about Shabnam and Kabir, but for now, let me just share that we are going to try one of the songs that she recorded - a beautiful lilting thoroughly peace-inducing song - in our Tomatis work.
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