It is the last day of the phase today. For Satguru Speaks fans you can find this week’s new upadesha by Bodhnatha online today.

At noon the Ganapati Kulam gave news on their activities. Highlights are:

1) Palaniswami and Kumarswami are working actually beginning assembly of the files for the new book on our Guru Parampara. It will be formatted like the Lemurian Scrolls book.

2) Hinduism Today, October, Digital Edition is reaching completion and should launch on time on Sept. 1

3) The January 2008 edition is in the works.

4) a great deal of work has been put into preparing art files that we have gathered through the years for inclusion in the “maha” library of Dinodia. The work involves entering a lot of metadata into the photos.

5) Lots of research on this area of “metadata” in photos. For the photographic technophiles among you, we are inserting the xmpdata directly into photos and also extract the same from photos. This add yet another streamlined work flow for projects. In particular, those who submit photos to TAKA who have the tools to add xmpdata to their photos can insert their captions right into the photo. This has the advantage of “living” with the photo for the duration of it’s life and we can see, even years later, such details.

Final installment of photos from our swamis’ last days in Malaysia:

Senthilnathaswami writes from the plane flight to India:

“From 36,000 feet above the Bay of Bengal, on our way now to Chennai, we are catching up on our reports from Malaysia. Here we are with Kulapati Silvarajoo and his family on our last night at their home.”

On Thursday morning, student Shanmugam took us sightseeing around Shah Alam. We went to the Taman Pertanian Malaysia (Malaysia Agriculture Park), a beautiful natural rain forest reserve at Bukit Cheraka. One of the features of the park is the Four Season Temperate Garden.

Inside this building they replicate each of the four seasons of the northern/western climate. It is now late summer. At 15-20 degrees centigrade, it’s quite a refreshing respite from the 33 degrees it is outside! Feels just like Canada or Northern Europe.

Here is a fully grown Gingko Biloba tree.

A diagram showing the building and how it works.

Outside in the park, monkeys swing from tree to tree.

Despite being neglected in recent years, the park is still a beautiful, quiet place for a nice nature walk.

What part of the park should we go to next? The animal garden, the orchid garden, the fruit orchards, the fishing hole…?

Shanmugam, our host for the day. He is an excellent navigator. He knows the roads all around Shah Alam very well.

Next stop was the park adjacent the big mosque in downtown Shah Alam. Not a soul was to be seen in this usually bustling area. Soon we found out why, when a huge thunderstorm suddenly appeared overhead. Lightning and thunder were less than a second apart, then simultaneous. It rained an unbelievable amount of water in the short period of about an hour. As we drove away, visibility was near zero as the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up at all. Traffic slowed due to visibility and near instant flooding, some places as high as a foot, maybe more.

That evening we had two temple stops. First was the Bukit Gasing Siva temple. This temple on a hill is under renovation after several decades.

Here a silpi shapes Ganesha out of cement.

Founded by a rishi whom Gurudeva respected highly, this is a powerful, special temple. When Yoginathaswami was an aspirant preparing to come to Kauai Aadheenam, Gurudeva sent him here to live with the rishi and help do the pujas in the temple. On the right is Bala, a temple committee member and friend of Kauai Aadheenam.

Somehow we feel right at home in a temple construction site.

The view from Bukit Gasing is 360 degrees, and from here one can see the entire greater Kuala Lumpur metropolitan and suburban area.

At a strategic point in the middle and high above the cities below, it is naturally home to a couple of giant telecommunications towers.

The ceiling of the temple’s entirely new structure has a beautiful lotus flower implanted in it.

Bala takes Yoginathaswami to the rudraksha tree from Kauai Aadheenam that he planted here years ago. There have been a couple of land slides at the top of the hill recently, one of them right next to the tree. Fortunately the tree was not affected.

On Friday we had a quiet, relaxed day at the Rubber Research Institute. On a walk around the plantation, we stopped and examined some freshly tapped trees. Here is a full cup of latex.

Yoginathaswami tells us that a certain type of bird builds nests hanging in the trees here, strategically positioned next to a marsh so they are undisturbed by humans. They implant fireflies in the ceilings of their nests to light them up.

On Friday night we went to the Maha Mariamman temple in Kalumpang, a sylvan village deep in the jungle an hour north of KL. We were met with grand ceremony, including flower showers, confetti bombs, a parade with nadaswaram, tavil, ending with more confetti bombs and fireworks as we ascended the stage. Five hundred people gathered to welcome Yoginathaswami. It was a tremendous outpouring of love and devotion. Many had tears in their eyes, they are so proud their village produced a sannyasin. It is rare in Malaysia. There are 1.8 million Hindus and maybe only 18 sannyasins.

Ladies on the left, all so attentive

There were so many people, they set up projectors and screens so everyone could see.

There were big posters announcing Swami’s visit, with his picture and a two-year-old picture of all the monks standing by Nandi in front of Kadavul Temple.

Swami’s talk was very well received. The community here is tight knit, disciplined, friendly.

The temple president presents Swami with a tray full of offerings. The event was so well coordinated. Everyone came forward to receive the blessings of the swamis

Five hundred people came forward for vibhuti prasadam, a small picture of Gurudeva and a flyer explaining the yamas and niyamas in Tamil. It was at least four times the number of people that came to any of the other temples we visited and gave our presentation at.

This was really a big celebration, like a festival. As people came forward, fun devotional music played loudly on a high quality sound system and everyone enjoyed a grand feast. It was definitely the high point, ending our Malaysia mission with a big bang.