3 min video about places, people and story of Like Two Rivers

A 3 minute video about how the lives of characters in Like Two Rivers weave the complex story.

• Chapter 68, from Like Two Rivers
• Seeking Sage
• Lost in the Mind; A Medieval Madhouse in Aleppo
• Walking on the edge of Knowing and Not Knowing
• Language and Reality

A one minute wordless introduction to the spirit of the book Like Two Rivers

The ancient song about the nature of reality, Shivoham Shivoham sung by Jakob Weise , with a video illustrating the world of the novel by V.J. Sam, Like Two Rivers.

Links for Jakob Weise videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/weisetv/featured

A one minute video with music and words, introducing the basic topic novel Like Two Rivers.

• Chapter 68, from Like Two Rivers
  Babaji was sitting at a distance, cross-legged and erect on a smooth, flat rock that the sun had dried of the night dew and warmed. Around him, a couple of dark khaki, woollen shawls and thin, white cotton loincloths had been laid out to dry. He had washed them in the warm holy spring, Kheerganga. When Gabriel came closer, he could see that the sadhu was engaged in polishing the copper snake bracelet with ruby eyes. The strings of prayer beads, too, whose gnarly wooden beads were dark and damp, he had cleansed in the holy water. He had stretched them out, side by side, on top of the shawls. This was everything he owned.
• Seeking Sage
  “So… he is a character in your novel?” she asks as we walk up towards his tiny house. A familiar anticipatory silence unfurls itself softly along the mountain path. “He is the inspiration” I say quietly and think about the enormous and old Himalaya cedar that shades his slate roof. I often think that when one day he is no more, he will exist as this majestic tree and I will continue these visits, but now to rest by back against the sturdy and immortal trunk, inhale its fragrance and close my eyes. “For the more than thirty years I lost contact with him, he was by my side, but I only knew this when I found him again” I explain but am unable to really explain. Grazing cows, holding juicy green clover in their soft mouths, pause to look at us with curiosity in their large melancholic eyes. People smile at us from beautiful old wooden porches. I imagine I see a knowing light shine gently in their eyes; as if they know why we are here. We walk slowly, winding up through green terraced fields dotted with small well-maintained houses surrounded by flowering gardens. The picturesque idyll is almost unreal and feels like an effect of our anticipation or the presence of the person whose wisdom we are seeking. “You know the 13th century sufi poet Rumi?”, my friend asks rhetorically; she knows my love for him and continues, “His teacher, Shams, walked around the Islamic world like a vagabond for most of his life, looking for just one person, one soul who would be able to understand him. Only when he met Rumi did his life as a teacher begin, and Rumi, who was already a renowned authority of law, philosophy, and language, became again a student. They transformed each other and Rumi shed his learning to become the timeless poet we know. What a magic time to have lived in…” my friend sighs.
• Lost in the Mind; A Medieval Madhouse in Aleppo
  One winter morning Nabil walks through the old Byzantine bazar. Lost in speculation he enters a dark gateway and finds himself lost inside an ancient narrow beautiful maze. A low sorrowful murmur echoes beneath the elaborate masonry domes, through the octagonal courtyards and complex corridors. By the 8th century CE, major Islamic cities had hospitals in the modern sense of the word. Bimaristans were built in Cairo, Baghdad, Aleppo, and Damascus—well-staffed, cloister-like havens designed to calm the spirit. The treatments, unlike those in contemporary Europe, were based on a solid understanding of an individual’s imbalance and included therapies using medicines, music, water, and massage, as well as occupational therapy, introspection, and nutritional programs.