There are innumerable ways of cultivating life’s many abundant harvests, but none more fruitful, fulfilling and freeing than a regimen of sedulous striving in the realm of spiritual practice. Why is this so? Assuredly, nothing other than purification of mind can facilitate the most subtle and sought after freedom that the human being longs for, either consciously, secretly or unconsciously. And this purification is achieved via sadhana, spiritual disciplines prescribed by an adept and esteemed religious preceptor according to revealed scripture, which cuts every man and woman in the image of abiding perfection inherent in each individual. Every man, Shiva incarnate, desires to break free of all the binding fetters of life and mind, but life itself is predicated upon a duality-fraught existence created by the manifold mind. Each woman, Shakti in manifest form, dreams of a life shorn of its weights and limitations, but the restrictive modes of nature and the constricting conventions of church, family and society unwittingly fashion the very chains that bind existence into painfully predictable scenarios and boring rounds of sleepy and sterile routine. Given this conundrum, it is no wonder that the key of innate spirituality and its superlative aim is held out again and again, from age to age and lifetime to lifetime, by truly compassionate beings who have tasted freedom and spare no efforts in order to share it with suffering humanity. And they often initiate the process of its discovery in seeking and suffering beings by pointing out the need for an intense yearning to be free. “Cry, oh mind, with a real cry,” sings Ramprasad Sen, “and the Mother of the Universe will not be able to withhold Her sweet Presence from you any longer.” “Beings cry jugs of tears for mates, money and materials,” states Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, “but shed not one tear for God.” Furthermore, our intense yearning to be free must lead us straightaway to the path, the teacher and the specific formula for the attainment of divine life which best suits each individual’s karmas, abilities, and capacities. The thorough breakdown of all that impedes — doubt, fear, misconception, inordinate desire — is brought to bear in life by the cultivation of spirituality via hands-on practice. Without it, there adheres in the mental body a whole host of various forms of attachment, call them what you will, many of them masquerading meekly as freedom. As Sri Shankaracharya poignantly puts it: “When I was a baby I was attached to my mother’s breast; when I was a young man I was attached to a young woman; when I was old I was attached to anxiety; but to the Supreme Brahman, alas, I was never attached."

Nature and Illusion is the first extended study of the portrayal of nature in Byzantine art and literature. It provides a new view of Byzantine art in relation to the medieval art of Western Europe.

Vols. - include the Shorthorn Society's Grading register for beef Shorthorn cattle; v. - include the society's Herd book of poll shorthorns.