While in school , I had a classroom-mate from Algeria , who is muslim .
Sometimes he told me some anecdotes and tales from his culture .
One of his favorite themes was when he gave me some insights into the supernatural beliefs that had to do with his traditions .
So he would tell me something about the marabous , the "medicine men" from the desert ; he would tell me about the "maleficious eye" ; the significance of praying with the hands upwards ( not folded ) and other things I don´t remember that much .

One thing however caught my attention , maybe because he was very theatrical while explaining :
It was when he told that people over there are very fearful of evil spirits like the Jinns and the Shaitan .
Most notably , he described this Shaitan as a horrible living being , from whom one would have to guard oneself .
So , this Shaitan somehow became engraved in my memory .
But , at that time , I don´t think that I already consciously knew of Gauranga Mahaprabhu ( although I already had read some Iskcon-monthly-magazine , but probably Gauranga was not mentioned therein ...) .

Now , for me the funny thing is , that everytime I hear the word Chaitanya , I cannot help but remember the Shaitan from the traditions of my muslim class-mate .

And I cannot help but to permit my spaced-out mind to formulate some theories about the connection of both these words ...

The first reference that comes to my mind is the pastime where Gauranga converts the brave pathana muslim soldiers to vaishnavas .
So , my theory is that this transcendental pastime made its way to the western lands of Arabia , to the mleccha-deshas ( ) , where the vizirs , ayatollahs and coran-experts analized the gravity of these facts and came to the conclusion that this Chaitanya was a powerful , hazardous preacher who could even convert staunch muslims into vaishnavas . So this had to be stopped , according to their opinion .

Therefore , they invented the horrible pastimes of the Shaitan , to drag people away from the possibility of ever getting attracted to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu .

The second reference coming to my mind is the conversion of the Chand Kazi .
But here , the tricks employed by Gauranga were even more mischevious :
He appeared in his frightening form as Ugrasimha in a dream of the Chand Kazi , threatening to kill him and leaving some wound-marks on his chest .
And then , he was also intimidating him with his large amount of followers performing an aggressive kirtan , featuring repetitive souds , in front of his house .
But it did not stop there . This frantic sannyasi entangled and confused the mind of the poor Kazi in useless arguments concerning the sanctity of the cow and similar absurdities .
So when the dudes up there in Baghdad , Mekka and Medina came to know of these facts , they became even more angry , and decided that henceforward any muslim showing some sympathy for Chaitanya , will have to read the gruesome tales of the Shaitan , the evil spirit of the Mohameddans , while claiming that he is an avatar of this strange masochistic , dancing sannyasa , who was fond of banging his head against the wall .



Thinking further , I wonder if the muslim mothers do not resort to a special tactic , to bring their child to sleep , like for example : " Look , my dear Abdulrahman , if you don´t go to sleep immediately , the evil Shaitan will appear before you and show you his horrible deformed body , elongated like anything , with the joints of his bones separated , with his skin slack and hanging loose . He will then come near to you and mumble the frightening sound" gon-gon" into your ears . So , you have the choice , habib ! "

Ps : In my spaced-out theories , I have not taken into consideration chronological accuracy .

I assume that you mean "the evil eye." The idea of the evil eye is there in India as well.

Exactly .

It isn't neccessary when dealing with Chaitanya's pastimes. See also Bhaktivinoda.

Yes , there is surely a great potential for mental gratification in examining the funny side of Bhaktivinoda . ( Although I don´t know very much about that . Maybe the dubious "Caitanya-upanishad" falls into this category , that seems to be an invention by him , but I am lacking more complete information on this . )

When it comes to my theories , I had to admit straightforwardly that I cannot claim any chronological accuracy , because the concept of Shaitan is clearly much older than that of the golden , hidden incarnation ...



Aspiring to serve my senses ,
Nitaicandra

This is a very common belief - it is also found among Greeks, Armenians and Jews among many others. I remember in my sojourn among observant Jews that they would often add the phrase "Bli Ayin Hara" (without the Evil Eye) after any statement of praise or hope. Greeks and Armenians often wear an eye pendant to ward off the evil eye. Jews wear the hand in eye pendant. The hand in eye is also often found as a decoration in homes, especially with Sephardic Jews.

One variety of symptoms of affliction from the eye includes a sharp headache, an aching neck and "creepy crawlies" on your arms when in the presence of a very envious person. It is not pleasant if you have experienced it before. My own mother is known to cause these symptoms in our family. I know for a fact that she does willfully wish harm on people and believes in curses - and then she wonders why the rest of the family avoids her!

check out:
http://www.luckymojo.com/evileye.html

i've also heard that when one masteurbates, they are having sex with either ghosts or demons. some of my best sex has been either with ghosts or demons.

In Greece after you compliment someone (especially a child since they are more vulnerable to evil eye) you are supposed to spit on their face (in mock gesture) in order to cancel out the compliment effect! haha.

When one masturbates, they are having sex with either ghosts or demons? Who are "they"? And how come they are affected by "one's" masturbation?

I guess that you mean to say, "When people masturbate, they ... etc." Or how?

Oneiros you pedant!

I think people say 'one' and then they feel stuck because they have to use a singular 'he' or 'she' and they feel bad being racist and picking a gender therefore it is actually an established convention in some circles to say -they- to solve this.

I would always have trouble with this: one, he, she, they thing when I was translating or spending too much time with language. I would try to just avoid it all together plus I think using 'one' too much sounds too self-serious. But I find if you avoid using 'one' you end up writing too much in passive tense which does not sound very vibrant. There is no winning with words!

Pedant? As it stands, babu's sentence is not meaningful; there is nothing for "they" to refer back to. Grammatically, "they" cannot refer back to "one." So, there.

That was not a joke, believe it or not, gramatically 'they' can refer back to 'one' without being corrected as 'false grammar.' This is an established convention used particularly since the 70s proposed for those who for feminist reasons prefer to use a gender-neutral pronoun. I am sure this is why babu is using it as he has candidly confessed in another thread that he is exploring his girl power and lesbianism lately.

Ignoring that, singular 'they' has also been used in English since the time of Chaucer. For examples of its use in english literature by famous writers and a more detailed discussion see Henry Churchyard's site. No one can actually dismiss such usage as wrong though I am sure pulpitarian english schoolteachers would be quick to falsely reprimand a student who writes this way.

I only focus on such things because I am on a personal mission to subvert prescriptive perspectives on grammar so that I can eventually have everyone writing as incoherently as I do.

Oh, I didn't know that. But I have heard that if one has illicit sex outside of the prescribed times and purposes, ghosts and demons are attracted who subsist on the excreted bodily fluids on such inauspicious occasions.

QUOTE (Milla @ Oct 15 2005, 08:10 AM)

QUOTE

i've also heard that when one masteurbates, they are having sex with either ghosts or demons. some of my best sex has been either with ghosts or demons.

Oh, I didn't know that. But I have heard that if one has illicit sex outside of the prescribed times and purposes, ghosts and demons are attracted who subsist on the excreted bodily fluids on such inauspicious occasions.

I put my brother, who is on a visit and who has not been in touch with GV since he "blooped" some 20 years ago, to read some of these texts we have here. He laughed so much he actually fell from his chair! The reason was twofold. He remembered some of these odd statements and found them extremely funny. The second reason was more like a laugh of relief when he found out how you deal with these things. Just wanted to share that with you.

This reminds of me the confusion we had when a Swedish (ex?)devotee Prsnigarbha changed gender and became a girl. Especially when he was still in the process of becoming. It was very hard to refer to Prsni as she, but it would have been disrespectful to use he. At one point I resigned myself to "s/he, but that only worked for the nominative, and what about possessive pronouns??


Oneiros, it seems you have just been called "pulpitarian english schoolteacher"! Right at you!


Evakurvan, would you consider making this your sig?

I've read a book about multicultural challenges in the Swedish health care system, which mentioned that certain immigrant groups, especially villagers with little education, find it very hard to deal with the Swedish health care staff when their children get sick. First they try home cures and rituals to ward off the evil eye (which they suppose is what has made the child sick). If these fail, they go to the doctor, who will frequently compliment the child's looks or charm as a way to ingratiate themselves to the child and parents. But this is exactly what one should not do, according to that belief, as it attracts the evil eye. The child should be as little noticeable as possible. If the child is beautiful, that beauty should not be mentioned. Sometimes the parents will also try to conceal it by a kind of ugly-making makeup. To the minds of these people, the Swedish staff exposes their already sick children to a terrible danger.

when people masteurbate, that is foreplay... in the purest sense, assisted masteurbation is not masteurbation and therefore will not have the desired effect of attracting ghosts and demons except if done at inauspicious times

or maybe you are thinking of one of those masteurbation parties where folks sit around the circle and diddle themselves... i don't have any experience in that and so am unsure if ghosts and demons are gathering but it doesn't sound very auspicious and so according to milla, it sounds like a feast for them

btw milla or anybody, how do the demons eat the sexual fluids? ... straight or as an ingredient in some of their recipes???

Argh. I must have missed that. Will have to look it up and convince myself.

Haha ugly-making makeup that is funny.

If you think pulpitarian schoolteacher is harsh look at what this linguist wrote about it on the webpage I posted above -->

EXCERPT:

" Singular "their" etc., was an accepted part of the English language before the 18th-century grammarians started making arbitrary judgements as to what is "good English" and "bad English", based on a kind of pseudo-"logic" deduced from the Latin language, that has nothing whatever to do with English. (See the 1975 journal article by Anne Bodine in the bibliography.) And even after the old-line grammarians put it under their ban, this anathematized singular "their" construction never stopped being used by English-speakers, both orally and by serious literary writers. So it's time for anyone who still thinks that singular "their" is so-called "bad grammar" to get rid of their prejudices and pedantry!

These files contain [...] examples of singular "their" etc. from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and elsewhere. While your high-school English teacher may have told you not to use this construction, it actually dates back to at least the 14th century, and was used by the following authors (among others) in addition to Jane Austen: Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, the King James Bible, The Spectator, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron... "

I found this page after I wrote those posts but he is also using the references to pedantry and hi-school english teachers, it looks like I am not the only student disenchanted by such corrections. There is much to say but that guy's page is more detailed than I could ever be, though it deals only with one example. An interesting book related to this is Chomsky's book on grammar that someone else mentioned in another thread.

Lets accept that masturbation involves interaction with bhutas , pretas and pishachas , whatever shape that might take , and of whatever nature that might be ...

But now , I cant help but remember the claims of Hurrycash Swami from his bolder days , when he insisted that he was so elevated , that even ghosts and spirits would assist his lectures . Yes , he even went so far as to say that he gave exclusive lectures for these subtle-bodied beings .
Now I am wondering if he didnt forget to tell some more intimate details from these meetings ?...

It seems that someone or something attracted these entities into the temples... for a feast...

So you did make that delightful statement your signature, Evakurvan! Yay!

Actually it's ghosts, not demons. They subsist on all kinds of strange stuff, and one of their things they eat are the sexual fluids released during illicit sex. I don't remember the rest and can't give you any recipes. I read this in some file or print-out being passed around, it was from some Purana.

I was hoping that I would find the quotes on www.veda.harekrishna.cz, since the file belonged to Jan Mares, but didn't succeed. But I found the following on http://www.salagram.net/ghosts.htm (the website of Jaya Tirtha Caran, a famous Vedic):



It goes on and on, describing different kinds of ghosts and possessions, esp.ones involving young girls with lusty desires. The remedial measures are also listed in the end, including a link to Citteshvarji's website in Spanish, English and Russian, with a cool intro with Oriya mantras:

http://www.pagalbaba.com/web/

Enjoy!

YEAH Eva. It's about time English has a third person singular gender-nonspecific prounoun! I've been advocating "they" for that position for quite a long time.

It's already happening; why not make it official?