The Night

The night’s frenzy in misshapen shapes
Is scorned by the illumined day
But the eve of shadows is only the curtain
To a more wholesome symmetry

For too bright does the star shine in the day
And makes the earth His imperfect mirror
While She regales in her own mysteries
In the shroud of the black

Wherefore would the play happen?
And what would give mystery her cover?
The dark of terror and blood is the romance
Of the brave heart dulled by over-indulgence’

Let ravenous murder roam the streets
And palaces reek of carrion flesh
If the merry perfumes elate in profusion
Make the ugly stench too strong to conceal

What of beauty and what of peace?
Whence derive the angels their meaning?
The evil terror is the elixir of the good
And balm to one dulled by peevish morality!

An Upanishad in Urdu

Siraj Aurangabadi & Akabar-ala-abadi


khuli jab ke chashm-e-dil-e-hazeeN
to voh na num rahaa na taree rahee
hoi hairat kuch aisi aankh par
ke asar ki bai_asree rahee
pad.ree goosh-e-jaan maiN ajab nida
ke jigar na bai_jigree raheee
Khabar tahiyyur-e-ishq sun na junooN raha na pari rahee
na to tu raha na to maiN raha jo rahee so bai_khabree rahee

Translation by Muzaffar Ali:

The eyes of an anguished heart open...
No longer moist.. Bereft of tears
The perplexed vision
Remained unmoved.. Devoid of response
The soul heard.. An unusual sound
That took the pluck of life away
As wondrous love revealed itself
The fairy vanished..The ecstasy lost
Nor you remained.. Nor I was found
mere oblivion was all there was...

A Khamsa from Akabar-ala-abadi to siraj Aurangabadi's ghazal
"Khabar Tahiyyur-e-ishq sun" (http://www.desipad.com/literature-poetry/64652-khabar-tahiyyur-e-ishq-sun-siraj-aurangabadi.html#post199454)
A Khamsa = literally five. .

Khabar tahiyyur-e-ishq sun na junooN raha na pari rahee
na to tu raha, na to maiN raha, jo rahee so bai_Khabree rahee

(tahiyur-e-sihq = wonder of love)

shah-e-bai_Khudee nay Aa'ta kia mujhey ab libas-e-barahanagee
na Khirad ki baKhya_giri rahee, na junooN ki parda_dari rahee

(shah = grace, bai_Khudi = ecstasy;
barahanagee = nakedness; Khirad = intellect,
baKhya_giri = stitching, parda_dari = veil)

chali simat-e-Ghaib se ik hava, ke chaman zahoor ka jal gaya
magar ik shaKh-e-nihaal-e-Ghum jisey dil kahaiN so hari rahee

(simat-e-Ghaib = from the unknown;
chaman = garden, zahoor = evident;
shaKh-e-nihaal-e-Ghum = a branch of nurtured pain, hari = green/alive)

nazr-e-taGhaful-e-yaar ka gila kis zabaan se karooN bayaaN
ke sharaab-e-sud_qadah-e-arzooo, Khum-e-dil maiN thee so bhari raheee

(nazar-e-taGhaful-e-yaar = heedless glance of beloved;
gila = complain, bayaaN = explain;
sahraab-e-sud_qadah-e-arzoo - 100 cups of wine of desire;
Khum = decanter, bhari = full)

voh ajab ghad.ri thee maiN jis ghad.ri liya dars nusKha-e-ishq ka
ki kitaab aqal ki taaq maiN, jo dhari thee yooN he dharee rahee

(ghad,ri = moment; dars = lesson/class;
nusKha-e-ishq = lesson/prescription of love; taaq = shelf)

tere josh-e-hairat-e-husn ka, asar isqadar so ayaaN hoa
ke na aainey maiN jilaa rahee, na pari ko jalva_giri rahee

(josh = passion, hairat = bewilderment;
ayaaN = obvious, jalva_giri = brandishment)

kiya Khaak aatish-e-ishq nay dil-e-bai_nava-e-"siraj" koN
na Khatar raha, na hazar raha, magar ek bai_Khatree rahee

(Khaak = ashes; aatish-e-ishq = fire of love;
dil-e-bai_niva-e-siraj = destitute heart of "siraj"
Khatar = fear; hazar = care; bai_Khatree = fearlessness)

Translation of 1st three shair

[1] when i heard the news of the wonder of love neither frenzy was left nor the sweet heart remained
I was no more and you were no more; oblivion, only oblivion remained

[2] the gift of the lord of ecstasy to me was the garb of nakedness
all that wisdom had stiched was gone ;the wills of madness no longer remained

[3] what came from beyond the invisible world that consumed the visible gardens with fire
just one branch of the tree of grief which they called the heart in flower remained

I have culled this mind blowing ghazal from www.desipad.com. My father called it 'upanishad in urdu'.

Zaahid ne mera

Za’ahid ne mera haasil-e-ima’an nahin dekha
Rukh par teri zulfon ko pareesha’an nahin dekha

( The preacher has not seen the fruit of my love
He is blind to your tresses that caress my face)

Har haal mein bas pesh-e-nazar hai wahi soorat
Mainein kabhi roov-e-shab-hijr’an nahin dekha

(That beloved face has illuminated all my states
The lover’s terror of a night of separation I have never faced)

Aaye the sabhi terah ke jalwe mere aage
Mainein mager ei deed-a-e-haira’an nahin dekha

(All kinds of wonders danced before me
But O my love of bewildered eyes!
Not one engaged my sight)

Kya kya huya hunga’m-e-junoon ye nahin malo’om
Kucch hosh jo aaya to gareba’an nahin dekha

(I known not what all transpired in the ruckus of passion
When I came to my senses, my collar was in shreds)


This is a ghazal by the mystic Asghar. As always, the transcreation in English is not true to the literal meaning though not far from its essence.

Ishq mein tere

Ishq mein tere koh-e-gam sar pe liya jo ho so ho
Aish-o-nishaat-e-zindagi chor diya jo ho so ho

(A mountain of grief have I carried for your love
All pleasures of a luxuriant existence have I thrown away
To let life take her course)

Aql ke madrase se uth, ishq ke mai’qade mein aa
Jaame-fana-e-bekhudi ab to piya jo ho so ho

(Leave the school of intellect and come to the tavern of love
I am drunk of the cup of oblivious annihilation
To flow with life’s tide)

Hij’r ki jo museebatein aez keen uske ru-ba-roo
Naaz-o-ad’a se muskura kehne laga jo ho so ho

(All the poisoned sorrows of separation,
I narrated in Her presence
With a smile pregnant with grace and poetry
She said, “Let the music of life flow”)

Hasti ke is sa’raab mein raat ki raat bas rahe
Subah’e adam huya numoon paayon utha jo ho so ho

{Only a night’s dream did I spent in this charade of (human) existence
The Truth dawned with the first ray and I moved on the path of life}

[This is a ghazal by the mystic Niyaaz and my transcreation in English which is inspired by it. I have tried to put my feel of the Ghazal rather than its literal import in English]

Ye Ishq ne dekh'a

Ye Ishq ne dekh’a hai, ye aq’l se pinh’a hai
Qatr’e mein samandar hai zarre mein bayaa’baan hai

(Love hast seen what is hidden from the intellect
The ocean is in the drop and eternity in the point)

Ei pai’kar-e-mehboobi main kisse tujhe dekhoon
Jisne tujhe dekha hai wo deed-a-e-hairaa(n) hai

(O form of beloved! Whence shall I glimpse at thee
Whichever eye has seen you is a picture of bewilderment)

sau baar teraa daaman haatho.n me.n mere aayaa
jab aa.Nkh khulii dekhaa apanaa hii girebaa.N hai

(Many a time your sweet garment came in my hands
But when the stupor left me, it was my own collar I held)

ye husn kii mauje.n hai.n yaa josh-e-tamannaa hai
us shoKh ke ho.nTho.n par ik barq sii larazaa.N hai

(Is it the wave of love or the red passion of desire?
The lightening quivering on that playful one's lips)

Ashgar se mile lekin Ashgar ko nahin ja’ana
Ash’aar mein sunte hain kucch kucch wo numaanya hai

{You met Ashgar but little did you see of him
It is said something of his person is revealed in (his) verses}

{The ghazal is by the sufi mystic Ashgar. I have taken it from urdupoetry.com and loosely translated it.)

there is no u

there is no u

and no i

just the pattern

the idiom

the angry poem

of which we are seething words


(From a Facebook conversation with DJ)

The Psychology of Torture

Torture has been one of my enduring interests. It almost fascinates me. What kind of an interaction happens during torture, which is probably the only example of a very close physical and psychological interaction which is far from intimate? Indeed, the lasting effect of torture is the killing of the ability to relate meaningfully with others. What intrigued me was the effect that torture has on the psyche of a man who perpetrates it. One of my best friends, indeed one of the treasures of my life told me he had been a torturer while serving in the army in counter-insurgency operations. Initially, I couldn’t reconcile his suave, gentle and friendly aura with the cold-blooded cruelty that I associated with a torturer. Indeed he is one of the most compassionate and warm-hearted men I have had the pleasure of knowing, a man who leaves a lasting impression on all fortunate enough to interact with him. The strangest and almost fiction-like twist is that he was himself captured by terrorists and tortured for one night before the Army rescued him. I wanted to know what effect did torture had on him and whether there was a schism or a split in his personality as a loving and compassionate human being well respected by all who know him and a torturer.

Now, this post is a very difficult one for two reasons. Firstly, he is a very close friend and almost like family and someone may construe something against him without going into the intricacies of the matter and secondly, as he himself warned me, such an article can raise a hue and cry against the tactics the army uses to deal with insurgency. Now, I am well aware of these risks and am going forward with this only cautiously but I feel at least some of us would be able to take an analytical and unprejudiced view of the subject and not be swayed by the first wave of emotions. As for those who have too strong commitments or prefer to live in a soft world of their own, I request them not to read this piece.

My friend was nicknamed ‘Doctor’, which is a common epithet for torturers in the forces. When I asked him why he tortured, he said it was certainly not for pleasure but was to extract crucial information which could prevent loss of civilian lives. He held that while both the armed forces and the insurgents are up to a certain extent equipped to protect themselves, it is the helpless and defenseless civilian population which bears the maximum brunt of terrorist and counter-insurgent operations. If a terrorist is captured and not tortured, he is unlikely to divulge any information and if a terrorist incident involving a major loss of civilian life happens which could have been prevented had the necessary information been extracted from the captured terrorist, the army is both castigated and feels it failed in generating the requisite information. When asked why only some officers torture and why he was one of them, he said it is a sad job which ultimately has to be done by someone and inclination does play a part as not everyone is suited for such a role but while tragic, it is also necessary at times. When asked about the methods of torture he used, he denied elaborating saying they were too severe to be openly acknowledged. When asked if some people died due to torture, he admitted deaths due to torture did happen. On being asked if at times innocents who were merely suspected to be terrorists died of torture or suffered grave physical or psychological damage due to torture, he said at times it did happen, sad as it was, because sometimes the information to be extracted is so crucial that you really cannot take a chance and some collateral damage cannot be prevented. I was interested in knowing if there were men who didn’t break under torture and didn’t divulge any information in spite of possessing it. He said indeed there were such men and went on to mention a particular terrorist organization whose men routinely refused to divulge anything and bit off their tongues with their own teeth to prevent any information coming out of their mouths in extreme pain or in a state of semi-conscious stupor. He said such men terrified him by the sheer pain they could take owing to their faith in ‘a cause’. He reasoned that it is faith in the cause and the resultant motivation which led these men to die of extreme pain rather than divulge any information; otherwise, he held their bodies were as susceptible to pain as that of those who took no time in coming out with all the information.

In a deep contemplative voice, he said that while people who have had a sheltered life and never really faced the worst may think words like 'courage' and 'Iron Will' are merely for literary effect or belong to the realm of fiction, these very qualities are the most crucial in determining whether or not one would break down under extreme torture. He emphasized no one actually knows how much bodily and mental pain can he take for a cause until actually subjected to torture. Many a times, people surprise themselves. Someone who thought he would not divulge anything may start speaking within the first five minutes while another who thought he can't bear any pain may suddenly find an immense inner strength which makes him go through immense torture without disclosing anything. Will and determination are all that matter at that crucial point when the pain becomes too much for the body to bear. After the body has crumbled under extreme suffering, it is all in the mind.

I asked a rather stupid question. Did the torturer take care that the tortured did not lose consciousness? He answered the one who has lost consciousness can always be again made conscious for another round of pain. While elaborating, he said physical torture was always the last resort and was preceded by other methods and ‘psychological operations’ among which was the acting out of being tortured by an army officer masquerading as a terrorist to frighten the suspect into divulging information and other measures. I asked him if he managed to extract all the information from a suspect, what he did next. He surprised me by saying he himself nursed the suspect back to health as his only concern was to extract information and he bore no personal grudge against the terrorist. He reiterated the crucial difference between ‘torture for information’ and ‘torture as a punishment’ and asserted he was not a votary of the second. When asked if he would again torture a man to death, now that he had taken retirement from the army, he said,“ For the nation, yes.” When I reminded him that the nation is an ideological construct with ever-fluid political boundaries, that a region considered an integral part of a nation a few decades ago may be seen as an enemy state now, he saw ample reason in my argument but said it was specifically to prevent such a disintegration of the sovereign state that he served that at times extreme and ethically dubious means had to be adopted. Towards the end, he told me there is a difference between ‘Case for a Cause’ and ‘Faith in a Cause.’ While a particular region may have genuine grievances and thus a case for a cause, it is only when such grievances are articulated in a manner which is at once violent and a serious threat to internal peace that the army is called upon to deal with a situation which is neither of its making nor one which is within its core competence to deal with. He reiterated that no military solution to an insurgency movement which has its roots in a genuine grievance and enjoys local support is possible and the army can at most ‘contain’ the insurgency until a genuine political solution is worked out based on addressing the grievance.
I would try to indulge in a detailed psychological examination of this material in a later stage.

Disclaimer – This article has no mention to any specific country or the army of any specific country. It should be treated as a case for psychological exploration without prejudice to any nation or its armed forces.

Full Circle

It was a pleasant evening. It was summer but there was no sign of it in that mountain evening. On the first day of August, as I stood near the ITI gate, I was sure of my purpose but not of the force that gave it its potency. I had to meet her, talk to her and tell her something of the circumstances which made my life so very different from when we had last met. It was a hopeless endeavor from the very beginning. A conversation requires receptivity in the listener. I simply could not accept that she had no patience for me though everything pointed to that. When we had last met four days back and she had taken me to her home, the air was that of cold formality and discomfort. But wasn’t there one moment of that same old empathy and deep bonding? If only one moment. Wasn’t she my angel for that moment of gaze and that second of concern? Was she not still the woman I had loved to the point of ecstasy though that love had long been mired with naked jealousy and spite? If she no longer meant anything to me, why had I come back to Solan, the town replete with her memories, and why was I waiting for her to come back from her internship. The point I had chosen was strategic. Whether she got down at the Ganj bazaar bus stand or the New bus stand, she would have to pass from ITI gate to reach her home. This was the third evening I had waited for her. On the previous two evenings, my choice of location hadn’t been strategic enough and I must have missed her because she got down at the wrong bus stand. But today I was determined to meet her and all roads converged at the point where I was standing. I could have called her no her home number but I wanted to talk to her face to face, to let my facial expressions show my sincerity and to look into the visage that had inspired poetry in me. I was not in the best of health. Something was wrong with my stomach and I had an inkling of a fever. I was unshaved and unwashed, wearing a shabby shirt. But appearance hardly mattered to me then. As the evening begun to darken and I had almost lost hope, suddenly she appeared in all her enigmatic beauty. Wearing a light salwar kameez, she was coming towards me. I hadn’t seen her in salwar kameez ,the traditional north Indian dress, since we were classmates, ten years ago. She saw me and her gaze showed discomfort and even a hint of contempt. For she was not alone. Walking side by side was a young man, dressed in a neat pair of fashionable clothes and looking foolishly handsome and charming, if you know what I mean. He seemed taller, neater and more broad-shouldered than me. He even seemed more handsome than me. Now, reasonably I should have done one of the only two decent things to do. The best would have been to intercept them and politely tell her I wanted to talk to her. The second best would have been to keep standing there and let them pass. What I did was the worst possible. I followed them while she knew I was following them. I crossed them near the Traffic chowk and our eyes met, my eyes were a mixture of hatred and pleading and hers of contempt and some other emotion I cannot fathom. I stood still. I saw her conversing with her man and the way she looked into him, the way her gaze completely dominated him and perfectly flowed her being into his being, made me sure they were lovers whose love had stabilized into a shared rhythm when one body talks to another body without any language. I stood stupidly gazing at her against my better judgment. The two of them stopped near the DC office and were having some conversation when suddenly she pointed her finger at me and her lover followed her finger to look at me. And I was looking at her and her pointed finger and the strange mix of ugliness and authority which her face seemed to have become. She seemed to be gesturing me to come to them. It was all dizzy, like a dream. But I saw clearly that she was gesturing me to come to her. I even heard her command for me to come. Like a servant, I moved towards the woman I had loved with all my heart for the last ten years.
‘He is Aman.’ She told her man. ‘So, he is Aman.’, his voice seemed weak and strangely vulgar to me, whether because it really came from a weak man or because of my spite for him is something I can’t ascertain with the intense subjectivity which colors such encounters. ‘Meet Bhanu’, she said to me and after seeing the disgust in my face to which she responded with an expression which was a cross between disgust and spite. I was looking at the ground because my face was full of such hatred and such a realization of my weakness and defeat that I just couldn’t face her. As for him, I thought I would punch him if I looked at him long enough. But would have I? He seemed stronger than me and I was down with fever. I had a tough motorcycle helmet with me and I have hit men much stronger than me when provoked but here, what ground was there for me to fight him? She was free to choose anyone to be her boyfriend, to move around with anyone. But my heart knew nothing of this sort. It was full of intense hatred and a shame which made me shrink. It seemed my very body would crumble under shame. They were talking to each other and he was flashing a cell phone far more expensive than the one I then held in my pocket. The shame was killing me. “ Excuse me Priya, can you please give me your cell no.?” How damn foolish it was on my part to say that, to be so formal as if I had seen her for the first time as if she was that bastard’s property. “I can’t give it to you.”, her voice was pure hatred and hatred always made her look ugly and mean. And she walked away. I stood looking at the ground. He too didn’t move. I considered my options. Should I hit him with my helmet? Finally I moved away. For the next two weeks, I sat in my room, hardly eating anything. Piles of newspapers collected outside my door and I cried unwept tears. As I later looked back at that evening, two things struck me. The first was the feeling of déjà vu and almost pleasure when I saw them coming towards me on the mall road. It seemed so poetic to be defeated in love like this and to see the woman I had loved so deeply and for so long walking with a worthless spineless worm. The second thing was the cycle of karma. It was so beautiful the way it had happened. Two years back, I had boasted to him that he was an economic failure and would never be able to provide for her while I was off to a lucrative career with an MBA admission in a top B-school in hand. Now, the tables had turned. Severe mystical explosions had made me leave my MBA midway and I was living on my parent’s money while he had completed his MBA (from the useless HPU, I thought to some relief compared to my coveted MICA). And he still had her when I had boasted to him she would soon tire of him like her string of earlier boyfriends. Life indeed had come full circle.

The Past

1998

We have recently moved from Himachal to Punjab. I miss the mountains immensely and am terribly homesick. I cannot reconcile with a life away from my beloved mountains. My father starts spending more time with me.

That night, my father was sitting besides me in my bedroom. I don’t remember exactly what were we talking about when I abruptly shifted to chaste Sankritized Hindi (I know very good Hindi but we always use Punjabi at home).

In chaste Sankritized Hindi, I told my father that I was not his son but a ‘yogabhrishta’- an ascetic who had ‘fallen from the path’ before he could attain ‘Moksha’, the final salvation.I told him that I had taken a liking for his son’s body when he had visited ‘my’ grave near a goddess temple in Solan. I said something to the effect that his son (me?) possessed a special charisma which I could utilize to satisfy my ungratified ‘carnal desires’ which in the first place had been the cause of the rupture in my ‘sadhana’ and subsequent failure to attain ‘moksha’.

My father calmly listened to what I had to say and then asked me things like why had I taken his son’s body in particular. He was playing along the delusion with me or probably he was giving leeway to the possibility of a real ‘possession.’

When I woke up the next morning, I remembered the things of the previous night. But I had no idea why had I said all those things to my father. The memory of that incident always remained with me and it ignited my interest in psychology. Indeed, even in class ten, I had a rough hypothesis of the psychological processes involved based on whatever I had read about Freud. My father asked me more than once if I remembered what had transpired the previous night. I denied any memory as I was too embarrassed to admit that I had talked about carnal desires in front of him.

In class ten, I had the hypothesis that the incident had its roots in the need to express repressed psychic content. I reasoned that through claiming that I was a ‘fallen yogi’, I could –
a) Express my sexuality openly before my father by talking about ‘unfulfilled sexual desires.’ My mother too was within earshot when I had said all that.
b) I could give a peg to my narcissism by claiming to be a great yogi over and above just the son of my father and hence much greater than my father who had merely a theoretical interest in mysticism

Apparently, my father took my claim seriously because a few days later, I was asked to submit to a shamanic cure wherein a man dripped a few drops of water on my head and touched my head with a spoon. I felt immense resistance against submitting to the shamanic thing because I felt whatever had happened had a psychological explanation and my approach was strictly rational/empirical in those days.

The shaman, who looked like any other common villager, touched the top of my skull with a spoon and put a few drops of water on my head. I felt immense resistance at what I felt was blatantly superstitious and irrational but couldn’t walk out of the thing, probably because I was reminded of the greater irrationality of what I had told my father.

I was amazed when the touch of the spoon produced extreme tension, an unpleasant feeling, in my head. When he removed the spoon, I willed not to feel any tension again. However, when he again touched my head with the spoon, I again felt an unpleasant tension. After removing the spoon, he asked if I had felt a tension in my head. When I nodded, he advised me to recite religious verses often.

The next events in this series happened only in 2005. Till then, I was committed to a rational-empirical mode of thought though my interest in theoretical religion and philosophy was growing.


After my graduation exams in May 2004, I spent some time in Chandigarh, preparing for the Common Admission Test. While I found the CAT quite easy, I was plunging into a deep existential crisis.

Why live?

This became the central quest of my life. Why live if the end was old age and death? Why go through a futile show of ever-changing apparitions?

I felt immensely constrained by my ‘fragmented’ existence.

I felt entrapped in my body, in a mere 174 cms. structure, alienated from infinity. I had this deep feeling that I was alienated from infinity. That I was in a prison – the prison of the body!

The thought that my soul wanted to cast aside the body came as a bolt from the blue. I felt alienated from the body.

The imagery of the war of Mahabharata became a very important tool to fight my depression. I saw myself as a forlorn Arjuna, fighting a losing battle, alienated from his Krishna. I saw myself as an Arjuna fighting alone, without his Krishna!

And I saw myself on a bed of arrows! Or fighting a losing battle in the chakravyuh.

I explored everything from philosophy to religion to psychology to sociology – to find the answer to the one question which seemed to have sapped my vitality –

WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF MY EXISTENCE? WHY WAS I ALIVE?

A STRANGE FEAR OF APPROACHING OLD AGE AND DEATH ENGULFED ME. I BECAME TERRIBLY AWARE OF MY OWN MORTALITY AND THE SHEER FUTILITY OF EXISTENCE.

I was afraid of old age and death.

At the age of 21!

The certainty of death after a few decades of changing apparitions made life a burden for me. I felt it was absolutely unnecessary to live for decades altogether when the end was certain – absolute annihilation. Even if life held joys, they would not be missed after death. And if life had sorrows, they would not disturb after death.

Death seemed a blessing.

The end of all futile striving.

Death seemed serene – an escape from an unwanted show – the chimerical
show of life.

I wanted euthanasia – a painless death.

Even the best of life seemed pale in comparison to death.

And After Death?

My suicide ideation came to an abrupt end when the realization that no scientific or medical theory could convincingly prove that the termination of the biological process would also terminate consciousness struck me.

Thisb was a major cognitive and experiential turning point.I would tell the story that enfolded after that later.

2027 AD

It is all minutely planned. The army has taken over. There are armed soldiers at all strategic points. A general curfew is about to be imposed. All offices are closed. All vehicles have been seized by the army. The civilians have parked all their vehicles in the specified spaces and handed over the keys to the army personnel.
A controlled mass movement of populations has been arranged. People have been ordered to board trains having particular numbers without knowing where the destination lies. The monetary economy has been frozen. Everything is strictly rationed. I am among the few who know that all trains which have the last digits adding to nine are headed for the concentration camps.

It is the FINAL SOLUTION - The plan to purge Muslims from India.

I have gone too far in my lust for power. I can’t let this happen. I want to move away and have my peace of mind. But is that a possibility? Should I tell them the truth? That I am no messiah? That I am not the redeemer of Hinduism? Would they spare me if the truth comes out?

The soldiers are taking positions. I am not going to die holed inside but I do not want to face inhuman torture either. They would barge in any time now. I smear my body with the filthy dirt and come out, hoping they would be stupefied by seeing the shit on my body and immediately shoot me dead rather than capturing and then torturing me.

" Put a tyre around his shoulders, pour petrol and burn him." It was twilight in Ahmedabad. They were atleast twenty men. And they were talking of burning me alive. I was staring at death. Strangely i wasn't afraid. I tried to reason with them. I tried to convince them I wasn't a Muslim. I tried to chant 'hare rama hare krishna' or some other hindu mantra. They weren't amused. One of them hit me with a stout stick. But his blow was hesitant. Others goaded him not to be afraid and to hit me with vigour. I felt another blow on my head. I saw no point in fighting that horde; or in running. They were too many and I was alone. I calmly bore their half-hearted attempts at beating me. Soon they were tired and started pushing me. They warned me never to come back to their locality.”

I shout the name of my beloved Krishna at the top of my lungs and walk right in the middle of the road, challenging the vehicles to mow me down.

It seems like a makeshift court in a hospital. A General Court Martial would be followed by immediate execution. I have accepted my fate with a calmness. Whether they torture me to death or put me before a shooting squad, liberation is sure to come once I am free from this mortal coil. Eternal life, eternal bliss is near enough.

These were some of the profound hallucinations I had in a single day in February 2006. It was the culmination of weeks of vivid experiences. Except for the riot incident, the rest was all hallucination. It was all very real to me. All through, I felt I had jumped into the future – into 2027.

The incurable secular monkey!

I confess that I am secular. Some of my friends who swear by Hindutva gave me the honorific ‘secular monkey’ just as I christened them ‘Saffron monkeys’. I don’t know which happened first. It all had the character of the chides and liberties without which no friendship is complete but the underlying principles are serious indeed. Now, I must explain what I mean by being secular. When I say I am secular, I certainly do not mean that I am denying the existence of a higher purpose or a perfect cosmic harmony which though hidden from the usual plane of human awareness is the only goal which can sate all desires. I also do not deny that cultural fossils of mystic insights, which come to us as organized religions have different hues in keeping with the space-time contingencies that guide their origin and subsequent progress. I am not against religious expression per se though I myself don’t find any solace in organized religion except possibly an aesthetic joy in certain symbolic rituals or the architectural beauty of ancient temples or medieval mosques. I enjoy the Shiv Tandav Stotram just as I relish the muezzin’s call for namaz at the Jama Masjid in Delhi. But these pleasures are aesthetic and do not mean I agree with all that the Koran has to say or with the dubious ills of caste system and prohibition of widow-remarriage in Brahminic ideology. Still, what I mean by being secular is that whenever I interact with a human being, I interact with him as one man with another and not as someone who belongs to any particular religion having an interface with the follower of the same or a different religion. This is as much a statement of identity as it is of a principle. The truth is that I do not derive the moorings of my identity from any religious current and not even from a fusion of all religions. Because all religions are fossils while I seek the living waters of mystic rapture, which anyways demand individual and personal encounter with the truth rather than any organized practice. While saying this, I must also clarify that by secularism I do not mean ‘minority appeasement’ but the complete absence of any label such as a ‘majority’ or a ‘minority’. My guiding axiom states that spiritual insight is inversely proportional to faith in any organized religion or historically transmitted belief structure. Better be a rational skeptic than a narrow-minded believer. As for the mystic, he has nothing to do with any belief for his only guiding light is direct first hand experience.

The sobbing girl

She was a brave girl. I wonder what was taxing her. A few days back, while on the Delhi metro, to visit home for the vacation, I saw an attractive girl, holding a bag full of IMS( an MBA coaching institute) reading material, silently sobbing. She tried to fight back tears but they kept flowing like baby rivulets on her cheeks. She made brave efforts to stay calm, to look composed and at times even succeeded to be without any tears. But soon enough the grief again overpowered her. I had an impulse to ask her what was troubling her, to console her, to tell her I was there for her. But something prevented me. Probably I thought I didn’t really had any right to do so as a perfect stranger. Or I may have felt she would not want to be consoled by a stranger, judging by how bravely she was fighting back tears. Once, she took out her cell as if deciding whether to call somebody who would listen, but then she put it back. One reason for my empathy could be a recollection of my own days of depression in the days of MBA preparation when I had carried much the same IMS bag. But primarily, I think it was because she was such an innocent looking girl and was fighting back her tears so bravely. I wish I had mustered enough courage to ask her if I could be of any help. But I thought it might be inappropriate. The thought that I was a psychology student and was supposed to have some idea how to respond in such a situation too kept coming but I had no real idea about what I could have done. The conduct of the other passengers was distressing. They looked at her in an almost angry glare, and then avoided her altogether, only to again give an angry or at least callous glare after every few minutes. It seemed there own lives were so wretched that they were either taking a sadistic pleasure out of it or they couldn’t care less. I hated those mean heartless people just as my heart melted for the sobbing girl. I was almost being led to ask her if I may help her when my station came. I hesitated. I could skip it and try to alleviate her pain. When I got down on the platform, I again felt half an urge to get back on the metro and tell her she didn’t have to face it alone. But I stood there and the train moved on.

Spaces

Well, I really cannot create as coherent a narrative around my thoughts over what the two of us have said so far as I would have liked, but a spontaneous response does seem to suggest a few things. Terms are inherently vague and merely pointing symbols to the ever-elusive reality. 'Spirituality' too can easily be reduced to a term and a concept colored by individual desires and understanding. For me, that is spiritual which transcends my empirical self and thus produces an authentic experience of the pure space of consciousness which lies beyond such divisions as 'me' and 'other'. In practice, I have often failed to achieve this ideal but I am confident that the way my self is developing is inherently right and hurdles are only temporary. That I see the world as my projection is not a position that I would blatantly discard because at certain epochs of my psychic evolution, I have had that naive but phenomenologically real feeling but its not an expression of mature contemplation or the correct reading of the experiential domain that informs my baby steps on the domain of the transcendental. An assertion closer to the truth would be that the force which projects the empirical self also projects the empirical world and the empirical world is projected through the lens of the empirical self in such a fashion that the empirical self takes himself to be the master of the realm which exists only because of its ability to perceive when the initial flowering of expanded consciousness enfolds. In simpler terms, the immense power and sway of the Self as its glory is revealed through the initial mystical experiences easily leads the seeker to suppose that creation emanates from him and him alone. This too must have experiential roots to have a real effect on thought and behaviour. However a maturer experience is that All is Conscious Bliss while aman and ghazal are the elaborations of that consciousness in two of its infinite hues. The Absolute is true in every manifestation as the particular and yet is limited of defined by none. Thus, the essence is elaborated in you, me and everyone while being free from all idioms of its elaboration and in no way limited by them. I do not project others or the world but am projected by conscious bliss just as others and the universe is projected by it. Better still, we all are elaborations rather than projections of consciousness. I would mail you later to say more ont his and also to relate it to my experiential reality.
Now, I see myself and the human individual in general as a 'conscious space' which is an aesthetic form informing a thickening in space and time. Mysticism is the immersion of the temporal thickening into the vast freedom from which it has emanated. Now, this space which the individual ultimately is, is either receptive or elaborative. Receptive space receives life while elaborative space adds varients to its essential beauty. When I write this or express myself at large, I am in the elaborative space of my being and when I receive life, I am in the receptive space. My receptive space is filled by an experiece of mystic joy through the vibration of consciousness. This creates a love for solitude and less space for relational elaboration. This is a failing when juxtaposed against my relational needs, which are due to an unresolved and conflicting desire structure. My need for a relation which creates a nurturant understanding to help me transcend the relational paradigm altogether or to make it the expression of a synthesis of receptive and elaborative spaces is indeed a peculiar and ambitious demand, but life has been generous to me wherver it has really mattered and I owe my confidence to the experience of this very generosity. Mysticism through 'relational idiom' is something that I have had an experience of only as a launching pad for pure mysticism which transcends all relational constraints. Personally, I can say with full conviction that mysticism always and necessarily transcends relational paradigms and is never a social endeavour. It is neither intra-personal nor inter-personal. Transpersonal is a slightly better term but here again I am not necessarily referring to the subfield of psychology which exists by this name. Fruitful engagement with others is a possibility only when no Other remains in any real sense and that requires unconstrained existence which can become the receptive space for the enfoldment of the sustaining bliss. The rarest of a relation becomes a symphony of a rhythm of love which seeks the Root.

A Paper on Self!

The Department of Psychology in the University of Delhi has a unique paper – Self! It is supposed to be an inquiry into, of all things, our ‘selves’. When I came to the department and got a bit used to the horde of girls surrounding me all the time, some of them a testimony to beauty, I was happy enough to be in Delhi, a city full of history and in a University which boasts, among other things, a ridge forest and flurry of interesting interactions with some of the finest minds in the world. Before completing a year here, I have heard or at least seen from close quarters, HH The Dalai Lama, Jaggi Vasudev, Thich Nhat Hanh , Sudhir Kakar, Ashish Nandy and the like. But far more important for me has been the interactions I have had with my classmates about, to use Bollas’ phrase, ‘the thing that is self’.
That we all exist and possess a ‘self’, a consciousness of being is too evident to need any assertion. Yet, what is this ‘self’. I am sure that I am conscious but how can I be sure that anybody else in the world is conscious? I can’t perceive anyone’s consciousness save mine. The consciousness of other beings is inferred. I supposed that if I have an internal conscious space beyond merely perceptible behavior, presumably, others too must possess it. But from an experiential standing, all other sentient beings are merely projections of my being; they exist because I Am! Indeed the universe exists because I Am! Perception needs a perceiver and the perceiver manifests as the self. While this abstract articulation of the epistemology of Self is important enough, here in psychology, we have been more concerned with the phenomenological self, the personal, the uniquely experiential narrative. Theorists have come and gone through the year. And some novelists and tellers of stories found their way in the motley crowd. Bollas and Philips with their nets woven around the edifice of Freudian psychoanalysis, Winicott with his fables woven around teddy bears, the absurd and disturbing Kafka, the contemplative Herman Hesse and even the sublime Upanishadas, all enriched the garden, some as flowers, others as interesting weeds. Many rebelled with Camus at the idea of an academic appraisal of their ‘selves’, others found it too abstract and some cherished it and were happy fodder for draining workshops on narratives woven around their psychically intense moments. What I couldn’t reconcile with initially was the dark, the absurd, the seemingly futile colors in the painting, the irrational fears and endless repetitive patterns. But it seems what Existence blesses with being can never be put besides any carpet of absurdity. What IS can be, lived, enjoyed, suffered, analyzed but not glossed into spontaneous oblivion.
After coming here, I have become more accepting of the black holes inside me. For now I see that they have devoured many bright stars and going deep into them would reveal the buried effulgence. And that has been the fruit of psychology in first year!

REALITY IS NEVER EMPTY

Notions such as 'Shunyata' (Void) or 'Fanaa' (annihilation) are purely imaginary nd delusion-inducing. To say that 'nothingness' exists or is a valid experience to be had consciously is a proposition too absurd and nonsensical to merit any reasoned refutation. How can consciousness emerge out of nothingness? And as far as all those who speak of the Ultimate as 'Shunya' or 'fanaa' are concerned, they are surely not speaking from a void or a nothingness bereft of consciousness. If they claim to speak from a nothingness, it is a ludicrous claim. If they claim to have returned from a 'nothingness' to speak, it's even more ridiculous. How can that into which a conscious entity can merge and from which it can emerge ever be 'nothingness'? Consciousness can only merge into a still deeper awareness. Dissolution pertains to a merger of the individuated consciousness into infinite awareness and never any non-being. All talk of void or shunyata is specious and imaginary and to be completely refuted by every genuine seeker, in whichever scripture it may happen to appear. All who speak of 'nothingness' speak from a plane of confounding speculation and constrained imagination. And all speculation and imagination happens in consciousness.Thus the very idea of 'nothingness' is rooted in consciousness. And that's what it is. A delusional idea!
To say that the densest point of Big Bang or the minutest zygote or seed is empty or 'nothingness' is again absurd. To say that the pure awareness which transcends the vibrations is void is also absurd for no emergence from or merger into a void is ever possible.
To quote from the Spanda Karika (Stanzas on Vibration), a beautiful flowering of Kashmir Shaiv mysticism,

12. Nothingness can never be an object of contemplation because consciousness is absent there.( It is a mistake that one has perceived nothingness) because when reflection (subsequently) intervenes, one is certain that "IT WAS".

13. Therefore consider that to be an artificial state similar to deep sleep. That principle( awareness) is forever perceived and not remembered in this way( as a memory of 'nothingness').

Again,

23-24. Once the Yogi enters That State which he takes as His support and firmly resolves that 'I will surely do whatever He says,' both the sun and the moon set, following the ascending way, inot the channel of Sushumna, once the sphere of the universe is abandoned.

25. Then in that Great Sky( of Awareness), when the sun and the moon dissolve away. THE DULL MINDED YOGI IS CAST DOWN INTO A STATE LIKE THAT OF DEEP SLEEP. THE AWAKENED HOWEVER REMAINS LUCID.

The last verse clarifies everything. Nothingness is the casting down of the dull yogi into deep slumber and not any valid experience. The adept does not swoon but goes deeper and still deeper into ever vibrant awareness. Thus Awareness is Real while nothingness is a stupor which appears in awareness due to dullness of the seeker.

To inhere in Awareness is sadhana and all talk of 'nothingness' is a delusion and an obstruction.

Mystic Holi

This Holi, a most wondrous spectacle opened which left me with an ineffable poetry of feeling and a joy of thought. I had decided not to celebrate Holi this time because of my increasing preoccupation with pollution and my desire to avoid synthetic colors. However, being in a Delhi University hostel, I didn't have much choice. In the morning, as I came out of my room, my hostel buddies were ready with the gulal. I didn't protest much and let them rub it on my cheeks though i was apprehensive of its effect on my skin and hair. i especially wanted to avoid any gulal on my hair for after coming to Delhi, I have developed a morbid obsession with protecting my hair form premature greying, something I have noticed is distressingly common in this city. I thought this was due to water pollution and have ended up using purified water for my hair. However as the spirit of holi got the better of me, I was open to one day of polluting gulal and wet colors. The next half an hour or so was fun with victims being made to lie supine and sprinkled with water-hoses. As I was enjoying the colors and the joyous mob, some of my nasty friends repeatedly persuaded me to drink thandai( a traditional North Indian drink made of milk, water, almonds and spices) and assured me it did not contain 'bhaang'(hemp). I was not really taken in by their protestation but I carried the unfounded notion that 'bhaang' would taste bitter like liqour. When I tasted the 'thandai', it was sweet and delicious. I thought it couldn't be bhaang and drank it with gusto. Indeed, after a while I even took a second helping even after I had grave doubts about it being just 'thandaii' by then. I reasoned if it is bhaang and I have already had one glass, why not enjoy a full experience of losing control. Yet, I wanted to be aware as long as possible and to witness the intoxication so as to transcend it. For a while, I enjoyed the mingling of color and bodies, but soon retired to my room. It was the end of holi form my part but my friends had different ideas. Some of them banged open my door and sprayed me with aerosol, which i particularly dislike and which seemed toxic going by the smell. i asked them to stop it but they were too merry to listen. After they had left, I bolted the door and went in the verandah for fresh air. As, I was standing there, leaning against the wall and gazing at the badminton court immediately below, a most wondrous thing happened. Not only did I lose awareness of time and self, but everything became thick with life. It is very difficult to explain but let me make a sincere effort. As I was standing in the verandah, everything became thick with awareness, everything became an ocean of awareness - a dense coscsiousness. There was no Aman, no badminton court and no sunlight or sky, except as barely perceptible modifications of a beautiful intelligence, an all pervading consciousness. I was emerging out of and again merging into a unity; when in the unity, there was no 'I', and the emergent 'I' was very profound and yet frail because it was, as if newly born. When aware of 'I', I was astounded at the wonder of the all pervading awareness in which I was only a point of consciousness. The physical world around me, the sunlight, the badminton courts, the shouts of the holi mob, seemed unreal, a play of images and shadows. reality seemed a wondrous unity of awareness, a thickness of consciousness. An ocean of awareness was I, and everything was awareness. Everything was oceanic, a wavelike sea of concsious vibrations. In this coean of reality, my body was a pattern of conscious light, a pattern ogf vibration with a distinct frequency which made it appear as distinct form the surrounding physcial reality. I was not aware of physical movement, but of a kind of light or a pattern of energy drifting across a denser light as I came inside my room.

Random lines

I dream of Lucifer

the prince of darkness

and the mirth of night

is revealed

the solitary rock

and the broken glass

I see my shadow

and weep

dry leaves fly in the dust

and hurricanes dream their death

Love for Form

This essay seeks to unravel the links between a predisposition to a particular idiom of religious expression and personality. It looks back to a history of psychological research on religion. The primary focus of this inquiry is to look into the interface between the gender of the chosen form of deity and the inherent personality disposition of the devotee. A liberal view on important religious systems is called for before a psychological examination. With the exception of Hinduism, which affords considerable space to the veneration of feminine goddesses wihtin its mainstream practice, all the other major world religions come across as patriarchic at first glance. Indeed Freud saw the idea of God as a version of the father image. Allah, the Christian God and Christ, his son and the Jewish Jehowah are all masculine. Buddha, Mahavir and the Sikh gurus too are men. However a deeper inquiry would reveal the valence of the feminine idiom of the divine in all these seemingly patriarchic religions. In Islam, we have Fatima. Besides Sufism, which can be seen as the mystic face of Islam extols the beloved and seeks raptures in the ‘Ghazal’ or conversing with one’s beloved. The Sufis frequently see the divine in their earthly and feminine beloved. The Virgin Mary is accorded an iconic stature in Christianity. Besides Dante seeked salvation through the grace of Beatrice, his earthly beloved. Similar submission before a feminine figure is seen in Christian mystics from the early centuries after Christ. The feminine ‘bride of goddess’ is important in Kabbalistic Judaism too. And ‘Bhagwati’ or the Goddess is invoked in precedence to the male gurus in Sikhism, an outwardly patriarchic religion.

In the eastern worldview, the samkhya school of philosophy attributed to Kapil, contains the seeds of one of the first psychological inquiries into religion. Samkhya rests on a fundamental dichotomy between Purusha ( Consciousness) and Prakriti ( phenomenal realm of matter). This dichotomy is taken as universal and its successful resolution is seen as enlightenment. For a psychologist, Kapil’s views on the divine form are significant. While Samkhya saw pure consciousness as individuated, nonattributive, absolute and formless, Kapil wasn’t against devotion and meditation on a ‘divine form’. Although meditation on form was considered a step to meditation on the formless consciousness, it was neverthless a highly significant step as Samkhya saw mind as ‘material’ and hence incapable of perceiving or meditating on the ‘immmaterial’ essence of consciousness. Thus seeing the manifest forms rather than the unmanifest absolute was in keeping with the material nature of mind. On the same note Patanjali saw meditation on the ‘form’ as a way to merge into the ‘formless’. Now, Patanjali advised the seeker to meditate on the form which was pleasing to her or him, whether or not such a form existed in the cultural memory of the individual. Thus while meditation on Krishna or Durga was common, a seeker could also conceive of an entirely personal deity to concentrate on. The divine form to be meditated upon could be masculine or feminine depending on the inherent propensities of the seeker. Buddhist psychology too emphasized the significance of meditation on form when complete faith in Buddha was equated with the knowledge that liberates.

Tantra is even more emphatic on the significance of meditation on the form of the deity. Tantra is derived from an etymological root which is close in meaning to ‘interwoven’. On a philosophical level, it sees spirit or consciousness as permeating matter due to being ‘interwoven’ with it and not merely transcendental. Hence Tantra is seen as life-affirming as opposed to the more contemplative systems of yogic meditation. All major Indian religions have their own versions of tantra and it exists in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in explicit idioms. Sikhism too shows considerable effect of Tantra on its insistence on long unshorn hair and iron bangle which are derived from certain forms of aura meditation. The culture of sword in Sikhism too derives from Shakta Tantra. For a psychologist, tantra’s conceptual unserstanding of sublimation is striking. The celebrated Bengali Tantrik Chandidas held that to love a divine ideal is almost an impossibility for a human being wedded to material nature while to love another human being is natural.. From this, he points that the best way to cultivate love for the divine was to love the transcendednt in another human being. He extoled the spiritual merit of love for a person from the opposite sex. However for it to be sublimated, such love had to be unrequitted. Hence he looked at love for an unattainable woman, say one married or from the prohibited caste as a means for spiritual tansformation of the earthly passion. This clearly indicates sublimation.

The Truth

When the god of delusion was asked about his greatest accomplishment, he gave a half-smile that made him look like a sphinx and said, “The idea of truth.” That there is an objective truth, out there, to be discovered and basked under, is a cherished illusion of science. That all science is human activity and whatever is human is subjective is comfortably glossed over. We all experience emotions. Are they false? Or are they just as real as the sun that shines before our eyes but in a different mode of being? Aristotle, in many ways a precursor of modern ‘scientific’ spirit, believed the heart was the seat of emotions rather than a mere pumping organ. He held the brain was meant for ‘cooling’ the excessive heat generated by physical activity. Newtonian physics was based on notions and assumptions which were overridden by the breed of Heisenbergs. Before we proceed with mathematics, we assume that quantification of ‘objects’ is possible. This becomes problematic when our inquiry shifts towards human behavior. That there may not be any ‘objective’ truth about human behavior and that psychology may be more meaningful as an art and without the cocksure label of a science is hardly admitted.

Sound and Light

This is an interview of Sri Shivcharan, a mystic. He retired from a public body a few years back and has since devoted his time exclusively to mysticism. He has a home but spends most of his time in solitude in an ashram. I have reproduced it from memory. Certain meditation techniques are mentioned in it. However,they shouldn't be practised without expert supervision.

Q: I want to know something about mysticism.

A: To see the all-pervading ONE is mysticism. He ( Infinite consciousnes ) pervades all but is beyond experience except through mystic union.

Q: How to go about it?

A: What do you do as a practice?

Q: I can perceive the vibration that reverberates in silence.

A: These vibrations and effulgenes, sounds and lights, are all passing stages. Transcend them.

Q: How?

A: Deep concentration. Complete absorption in the internal sound and light which you experience would absorb your being and all perception would be transcended.

Q: What would happen after the inner sound and light have been transscended?

A: The effulgence in which everything plays would be revealed.

Q: Effulgence?

A: God is beyond all appearance of being. He is an infinite effulgence - a supremely transcendental bliss.

Q: That which exists cannot spring out of a mere nothingness. Can it?

A: It is not at all nothingness. Nor is it sleep or oblivion. On the contrary, It is infinity. It is uncreated transcendental bliss. It is neither something nor nothing.

Q: What is your own experience? And how did you arrive at it?

A: I was very fond of body-building in my twenties. I was stronger than four young men of your kind. I used to exercise a lot. I had a job in the municipal octroi department and was happy enough with it. A swamiji, a disciple of Sri Mangat Ram visited my home town . I felt a strange attraction towards him. He taught me how to meditate. I felt so blessed that I used to remain in a state of absorption for hours altogether. The swami commented that I was unique and had immense sadhana of previous lives to supplement my meagre present efforts.
I used to lose all awareness of space and time for hours altogether and sit, as a corpse, aware only of the inner sound and light, which gave me immense bliss. Then came the sudden jolt of infinity. An effulgence, an infinity beyond the effulgence- the supreme bliss!

Q: Did you follow any method?

A: Sitting cross-legged with a straight spine, I concentrated my gaze on the tip of my nose. I forcefully inhaled through the nostrils while mentally chanting 'So' , then pulled at my navel twice while mentally chanting 'Haung' at each pull and then exhaled completely while chanting 'Sa' internally. I continued this until the inner vibration became distinctly audible. Once it was audible, I concentrated on it and got a rare delight. When the concentration became intense, the effulgence appeared. Deep concentration on the effulgence took me to the blessed infinity beyond it. The final absorption took a couple of years. Once gained, I never lost the state.( I request the readers of my blog not to try out this method on their own without supervision from an established practitioner whom they come to love.)

Q: Should one put fingers in the ears or block them through plugs to better hear the vibration?

A: No. No. Some schools teach that method but the need to block your ears merely indicates that your consciousness is not attuned to the vibration. You should not block your ears. Let the vibration come spontaneously. With concentration, it would become so prominent that you would experience it continuously and experience its truth as all-pervading. In your entire room, in the city and the world at large, the vibration would be experienced everywhere. The important thing is to practise the breathing method I told you about. It leads to the vibration and the vibration leads to the light. Deep concentration on the light leads to absorption in the infinite purity of consciousness whcih is empty of all material content.

Q: Tell me something more?

A: As an aid, celibacy helps immensely. Preservation of semen is of immense help. Loss of semen make concentration difficult.( Here he expounded the traditional Indian view on celibacy). My Guru had asked me to prevent the loss of semen through uncontrolled passion.

Thanatos

The human body is made up of worms and is consumed by worms. This vivid image is used by a rather pessimistic thinker to accentuate the gloomy end of the vessel that carries us through the ocean of life. That there is a certain force within us which is dark and powerful in its darkness and can often engulf is made apparent by the irrational urge to destroy life expressed in terrorist violence, riots or a child breaking his toy in rage. We all know we have to die, and rehearse the final inertness of our bodies through our nightly deaths in sleep. Yet our nightly death indeed gives us many lives through dreams- those myths we enact in the cloak of the night.

The myth of Panthoibi

A myth is the dream of a culture. Just as what lies hidden beneath the surface of conscious experience reveals itself in dreams, the unmanifest content of a culture’s psyche finds expression in a myth. My Professor gave us the myth of Panthoibi. At first glance it is simple enough and hardly seems to require any interpretation. However, a second reading shows much scope for excavating rich psychic content.
It’s a Manipuri myth. The myth has many versions with some variations woven around the same central theme.Panthoibi is an astoundingly beautiful princess. She rejects a suitor before finally accepting one from Kangla clan. After her marriage into the Kangla clan, she sees the young man Nangpok, who is also from some royal clan, and falls hopelessly in love with him. Her husband’s family gets a scent. Panthoibi decides to elope with Nangpok. Nangpok comes dressed up in his traditional Tangkhul tribal attire. The fleeing lovers are chased, hunted down and killed by the husband’s clan. However, soon after their death, it is realized that they were divine and the clan committed a sin by murdering them. They are deified and actively worshipped. Panthoibi becomes a goddess and Nangpok a minor diety.
In Roy’s version, the first meeting of Panthoibi and Nongpok is emphasized. Here, Panthoibi meets Nongpok while still unmarried. Panthoibi is working in a rice field when she sees Nongpok who is out hunting. She is completely overtaken by Nongpok’s sheer vitality and loses her consiousness due to the intensity of her passion. Somebody finds her unconscious and goes to call out her father. When the father comes, Nongpok transforms himself into a tiger to escape being identified. The father takes Panthoibi home and she remains sick for a while. Soon afterwards, she is married into the Kangla clan and then the story proceeds as before. Parrot & Parrot adds the obvious detail that when the two of them meet (before marriage; in line with Roy’s version), no words are exchanged. I talked about this myth with my Manipuri friends and they gave me yet another version. In this version, Nongpok is a commoner and has no blue blood. It so happens that the kingdom is terrorized by a man-eater. The king promises the hand of Panthoibi to the man who kills the tiger. Nongpok hunts down the tiger but the king has other ideas and refuses to let a commoner tie the knot with his daughter. My friend was clueless about the intervening details but was in perfect agreement with the earlier versions in two significant details; that both the lovers were murdered and that they were later worshipped as gods. It wouldn’t be difficult to find detailed versions of the myth online. However my purpose here is not to study the variations of the myth but to interpret the skeleton I already have and give it psychological flesh and blood.
I am, at some level a cultural being, though my depth transcends my cultural moorings. Much of my internal psychic structure is unknown to me and the mist of transience obfuscates the little glimpses I have. If Panthoibi has to speak to my anima, I must internalize Nongpok.
Panthoibi is a princess, though not of any major principality, or else she won’t be cutting rice in a field. The archetype of the royal family invariably stands for the unapproachable. A shade of divinity is inherent in royalty. The belief in divine origin of kingship is a sine quo non for almost every theory of monarchy. The royal lineage of Panthoibi would signify those aspects of my anima which are too lofty to be approached. My preferred fantasy woman is invariably a goddess or a princess. In that sense, I can relate to Panthoibi. However, a deeper analysis of the myth at a more global level would lend scope to a personalised association.
Following Roy’s version, a princess falls in love with a hunter while she is cutting rice. According to one version, Nongpok is a commoner rather than a prince. Following this thread, a princess of royal blood faints on being overpowered with love for a wild hunter. That she is working in a rice field while this interesting incident occurs is significant. It points to the captivating charm that the free wild holds for the constrained agricultural society. Societal stratification and even the family as a necessary unit with its restricted and formalized behavioural pattern and especially mores curtailing the free expression of sexuality begin, in effect, with the village , and the village, of course appears with the replacement of hunting and food-gathering with settled agriculture. Thus, agriculture restricts freedom while ensuring safety from the wild and a secure food supply that follows a seasonal pattern. That the wild hunter is a metaphor for the id while the agricultural society is the rational ego constrained by the societal mores or superego restrictions is easy enough to make out. The latent desire of the norm-conscious society to recede or merge back into the norm-free wild days is portrayed through the rice-cutting Panthoibi encountering the hunter and losing her heart in a torrent of passion. Overwhelming emotions cause her to faint . This is ego’s last defence against a complete takeover of the conscious psychic structure by the id.
Taking a different layer of analysis, why should the murdered lovers be accorded divinity? Must myth glorify and deify what the society considers taboo but the individual cherishes unconsciously? Is the myth a message from the collective unconscious beyond societal mores and does that underlie its grip on the human psyche?
Is it a shared archetypical pattern which makes me , an alien to Manipuri culture, find so much meaning in this myth? Are myths common to all humanity like sighs, tears and laughter? It seems the deeper layers of our own unconscious are given an expression in myths. We attribute divinity to our own unconscious fantasies by exalting the taboo in the myth. The images within our unconscious which invite our awe and are yet at odds with the societal superstructure are accorded mythical divinity. The taboo of incest is allowed space in the myth of Brahma falling in love with his own daughter and producing one head in each cardinal direction to keep savouring her as she tries to flee her father’s unwanted affections. Polyandry is accepted through the pandavas collectively marrying Draupadi and the hermaphrodite is accorded divinity through the ‘Ardhanarishwara’ and Arjuna’s one year of lost manhood. Tragic lovers, of course, are the staple of myths all over and they frequently attain the hue of divinity. In the Old Testament ‘Song of Songs’, the lovers symbolize the soul and God. The Sufis find the communion of soul and God in the conversation of lovers( ghazal literally means ‘conversation with beloved’). Laila-Majnun and Heer-Ranjha have all been interpreted along similar lines as symbolizing the soul and the Godhead.
The mystical interpretation of love that brooks no societal restriction follows a familiar idiom. The married woman is a metaphor for the soul entrapped in or married with ‘matetial causality’. The soul is almost always seen as feminine. This marriage between soul and nature is an unwanted yet an almost inexorable union. It is interpreted as the natural order which constraints the soul and also the societal mores which curtail the freedom of the individual. The wild lover is a metaphor for the unencumbered Godhead which is above all causality. The elopement is merger of the soul with Godhead and it results in breaking down of all societal restrictions and unfettering of the constraints of causality. The murder of the lovers, on the one hand liberates them from human limitations while on the other puts the onus of guilt on the punishing society. All lovers must die young and tragic deaths to be accepted as mythical figures. No legends are born out of a couple dying of lung cancer in their seventies. Death in youth is a triumph - a crushing defeat inflicted on the debilitating old age.
Panthoibi becomes divine by being a martyr for reclaimig her inherent freedom. She stands for am expression of sexuality free from the binding constraints of marriage. Panthoibi is the ego which breaks free from her marriage to the superego and elopes with the wild id.
Now that I have given the myth a general interpretation, deriving a personal meaning out of it would require a creative ‘free association’. Panthoibi is my wilder part, my Eros, a stream of uninhibited pleasure seeking. However, it is also my truer part, my freer and more natural part. It is my transcendental dimension, the force which seeks to ascend beyond the confines of my ‘constrained’ conscious structure. While my rational-pragmatic structure limits my transcending drive through a ‘marriage of convenience’, the strong desire to seek unlimited and unconstrained bliss is paramount.
Panthoibi is a princess. Her being a princess touches two chords. She is unapproachable to ordinary mortals due to her lofty stature and she is at once free and restricted- free to indulge in luxury and restricted through mores and protocol. This image speaks to that structure of my psyche which is in a commanding position and is yet denied free expression or is too artificial. It is the bedrock of my internal concept of identity – expressed in action and felt in heart. Whatever I take myself to be at a given point in my life both defines and limits me. If, while doing my Master’s in Psychology from the University of Delhi, I come to internalize my role of a post-graduate student in a premier University, my self-concept would be ‘commanded’ by such a role. I would become proactive in raising my voice against practices that damage the environment or are exploitative if I link such an activism with my image of a university student. However I may be less able to roam around in loose kurta-pyjamas (an ethnic Indian dress) or play cards under a tree if I see such activities as unbecoming of a University student. Such notions about role-appropriate behavior are of course an internalization of societal conventions. Thus the ‘commanding’ or ‘royal’ core within me simultaneously facilitates and restricts. It facilitates whatever is in agreement with the perceived role and restricts whatever follows a different, and especially, subversive idiom. Thus, while being a scholar, I can be an art connoisseur but not a pan-chewing kite-runner.
Diving deeper on the same line of thought, that aspect of the psyche is ‘royal’ which reigns over the conscious sphere of experience. That which becomes the conscious occupies a commanding position for it defines ‘me’. It also restricts me because by being somebody in particular, I am estranged from the infinity of pure being. If I am a human being, I can not be the universe at large; if I am a man, I can not know, in any depth, what it means to be a woman. Thus the solidified known bars the expression of the liquid unknown. The virginity of Panthoibi suggests a ‘conscious’ which is still liquid or which is yet to internalize an archetypical idiom.
The marriage of Panthoibi restricts her ‘unconscious freedom’ while solidifying a particular idiom of being. Here, I am using these terms in a broad sense. While the unconscious can be individual, it is also collective and existential. The individual unconscious is the psychic flow that condenses to make my being possible and manifests as the conscious after undergoing a creative metamorphosis. The collective unconscious is the repository of archetypical images and structures shared by a species or life at large. Existential unconscious is the perceived ‘non-being’ which is the ‘Shunya’ or void from which all existence blossoms and into which it finally evaporates.
The manifest illuminates and thus reigns over the conscious and yet is restrictive for it bars the infinity of the unmanifest. Two illustrations from modern literature struck me which explore the relation of the perceiver conscious and the unconscious space which it reflects.

In ‘My Name Is Red’, Orhan Pamuk quotes Haydar Duglat’s views on miniature painting , “A miniaturist united with the vision and landscape of Allah’s immortal Time can never return to the manuscript pages meant for ordinary mortals. Wherever the blind miniaturist’s memories reach Allah there reigns an absolute silence, a blessed darkness and the infinity of a blank page.”

In ‘Disgrace’, J.M. Coetzee writes, “The clouds cleared, says Wordsworth, the peak was unveiled. And we grieved to see it. A strange response, for a traveler to the Alps. Why grieve? Because, he says, a soulless image, a mere image on the retina, has encroached upon what has hitherto been a living thought.”
“Usurpation is one of the deeper themes of the Alps sequence. The great archetypes of the mind, pure ideas, find themselves usurped by mere sense-images.”

Coming back to our myth, what does the marriage signify? It is the filling up of the conscious space by a particular idiom of the archetypical images. A successful ‘marriage’ leads to individuation – identification with a personality which is a creative yet stable manifestation of a substratum of archetypical patterns governing that life. Such a marriage opens up a space for self-growth and safe exploration. What happens, however, if the marriage is born of necessity or fails to live up to its romantic and human ideal? A bad marriage is the restriction of unconscious freedom through the usurpation of the conscious space by inhibitory societal or superego mores and regulations. I see the tragedy of Panthoibi in the light of her marriage in the restrictive Kangla clan as a rendition of a conscious space suffocate by denial to unconscious inspiration due to punishing and curtailing societal and biological limitations and their psychic internalization.
Who is the hunter who so captivates our princess that she faints? The early Christians used two intersecting curved lines as their symbol, which resembled a fish. It derived from Icthius, a reference to Jesus which meant the fish in Greek. The cross replaced the fish only after a few centuries. The apostles of Jesus were ‘fishing’ for men. The hunter is hunting prey – in both instances, a rendering of a powerful manifestation of the unconscious which liberates from restrictive laws and brings with it the freshness of ecstasy is portrayed as a human predator. I see the wild and irresistible hunter as a messenger from beyond the conscious who calls for liberation from all conditionings the ‘conscious’ has been sullied with while entrapped in the exigencies of a socio-cultural milieu. He is the wild liberator: wild because he is unencumbered. The entrapped ‘conscious’ cannot resist the liberator. The murder of the lovers signifies extinction of the ‘conscious’ and its merger into the beyond from which it had originally individuated.
Using the myth to look within, I have undergone a protracted tussle between my ‘mystical’ and ‘worldly’ dimensions. While I have a strong passion for absorption into mystic raptures, I also feel the pull of mammon. At times I just want to enjoy the pure bliss of being while at others I crave for material comforts and dream of exotic holidays in Europe. Such desires created a momentum which led me to study management and even when I shifted to Psychology, my past inclinations almost forced me to take OB as my specialization. However, at a deeper level, I never ‘chose’ to have these material cravings. Rather, they are ingrained in the socio-cultural milieu in which I exist. MBA was like a monster which was gulping all graduates when I passed out of college. The sheer propaganda and media blitz and resultant cultural climate forced me to study management to earn fast bucks while facilitating the sale of meaningless things which I myself would never purchase. This forced marriage became suffocating and increasingly unbearable. Thus I was like Panthoibi who was married because of overarching societal compulsions. However, soon I experienced the irresistible pull of a mystical search and broke free form the marriage. I quit my MBA midway and searched for a glimpse of mystical rapture with a now spontaneous, now dwindling passion. I had found my Nongpok. And I was my Nongpok.
However materialism did take its revenge just as the Kangla clan butchered the fleeing lovers. After quitting my MBA, I explored mysticism for two years or at least tried to explore it. In these two years, I was neither pursuing any degree nor working on any regular basis. Societal and family expectations and my own superego didn’t let me ‘idle away’ like this for long and I came to Delhi University to pursue my Master’s in Psychology. While I found clinical classes meaningful and more in keeping with my inherent inclinations, I compromised by formally taking OB (and unofficially attending clinical classes) to put my family (and myself?) at ease. This murdered a certain spontaneous passion inside me which wanted nothing but to break all conventions and live on its own terms.
The world and the times I live in are circumscribed by a neurotic compulsion to engage in a mad race to quantify achievement and even self-worth in terms of salaries and jobs; jobs which have no higher end than promoting conspicuous consumption, always at heavy costs to the natural environment and macro level human well-being. Such a cursed marriage of pseudo-aspirations and ‘talent at demand’ suffocates and spells doom for the flowering of the human within us. The higher and natural desires of spontaneous living and contemplation on being human are stifled in such an atmosphere. The only recourse is to elope with the sublime in us; the truly meaningful in us; to reject material accumulation and the trap of corporate nonsense and live for poetry, for the pure joy of learning, for the celebration of life and an inquiry into being human.
This is what this ancient myth has to tell us- we, the youth of twenty first century. Break the marriage with socio-cultural and pseudo-economic conventions and compulsions. Elope with your intrinsic nature! And breathe freely at last! Breathe freely!

A Western Minority in an Eastern Majority

( This is my friend Ty Canning's paper which he submitted as part of the course requirements at the Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, where he was a visiting student from the University of California in 2008.For the most part, I have presented it without editing for grammar or spelling to convey the original flavor. It is thought-provoking and presents an interesting though rather unfair take on India.)

Canning, Ty

November 24, 2008

Personality & Self

Delhi University


What will it feel like to be a Western minority among India’s Eastern majority? This question immediately arose in my head when I applied to the University of California Study Abroad Program to attend Delhi University. The experience of being a minority in India or anywhere is one that many people of European descent have not had the opportunity to have; which is why my newly acquired status as a minority, and a Westerner in India has been such a curious and unique experience.

Membership to the "in-group", which happens automatically when a person is part of the majority, is something often taken for granted. As a minority one involuntarily becomes an “other,” an outsider, and the isolating effects of this can be stressful on the human psyche. Along with the psychological implications, certain socially established privileges given to the "in-group" also tend to be taken for granted when a person is part of that majority. Only when one is placed in the position of being an “other” can they truly appreciate the plethora of unspoken and unacknowledged social privileges that they absentmindedly enjoyed before their status change.

I took those privileges for granted in my many years living in the United States. In America, there is a popular song lyric that says, “you don’t know what you've got 'til it's gone” that is far too applicable to the human psyche. I have had the privilege and curse to experience the true accuracy of this statement first hand in my travels in India.

Many of my common daily experiences, both external and internal, were revoked from my sociological status when I entered India. The privacy of anonymity, respect for my personal space, being offered equal prices for equal goods and services, being left alone, and many other subtle and not-so-subtle privileges that had previously gone un-noticed in my life, were no longer there.

I have also experienced internal struggles stemming from the simple fact that I have immersed myself in a different culture: how to feel about poverty, death, spirituality, my health; how to feel at all. These are just a few things in the long list of experiences that I have struggled with. Many of these aspects of the human experience were simply not visible in my life in the United States; all things easily taken as "givens" and not acknowledged as the enormous sociological and psychological privileges of being part of a cultural majority.

Privacy is the first thing that I noticed slip away from me when I came to India. This privacy is the kind that comes with the ability to be anonymous in a crowd. If you are like every one else you can blend in and not have others focus on you, which permits you a certain amount of anonymity and therefore privacy. I have come under the watchful eyes of everyone around me through my status as a minority; my ability to blend in is no longer available to me and I therefore fall under the inspection of those of the majority. This detailed scrutiny, which generally begins with my appearance and then automatically shifts to my actions, has definitely been the most overt side effect of my minority status.


The first thing I noticed, in fact, as a westerner in India, is the unrelenting stares. As if I were a creature not from this earth, my appearance is scrutinized down to the finest detail. There is no respite from this focus; walking down the street, sitting on the bus, the metro, a restaurant, each place I am analyzed with curious eyes. This constant focus on my appearance has made me rather self-conscious; I have found myself analyzing my own “look” and finding it unacceptable here; the blond hair, the blue eyes, the western dress, all now things that I wish I could change for the time being in order to fit in and have my anonymity back.

This focus has also begun to influence my actions. This can be seen through an account of a train journey I took from Delhi to Bodgaya. It was a Tuesday afternoon at two o’clock when I boarded a train at the New Delhi station heading for Bodgaya. I sat in my seat, answered a few questions from my fellow passengers, namely where I was from and what I was doing in India, then settled in to reading a book that I had brought with me.

The train started moving and a while later I noticed out of the corners of my eyes that every other pair of eyes in the open compartment was on me. I shifted in my seat a bit uncomfortably and continued reading, thinking that perhaps they had just looked over at that moment and that they were no longer looking at me. Entertaining that thought I eventually managed to tune back into my book for about twenty minutes until again I glanced out of the corners of my eyes to find that everyone was still looking at me. At this point I could no longer concentrate on my book so I put it away.

I soon noticed that every slight movement or thing that I did fell under the attentive eye of these people of the majority. I tried to eat some food that I had brought from home but found it so uncomfortable to be watched so closely while I was eating that I began to get nervous and dropped some in my lap. I tried to write in my journal, but found that the person next to me was reading what I was writing as I was pouring my inner thoughts forth onto the page, so that stopped rapidly as well. Every time I moved to do anything more than scratch my nose, whoever’s attention that had wandered from me over the course of the train ride was instantly focused back. I eventually crawled into my birth hoping that I could gain some bit of privacy being above everyone; but their eyes had followed me and were now watching me attempt to sleep. I turned my back to the compartment, hunkered as close as I could manage to the wall and eventually drifted off to a world where no one could watch me.

This account of my travels illustrates how the analysis of my actions influence them in the moment. The scientific principle that simply the act of observing a phenomenon changes it, is one that is sociologically applicable in this situation. Unobserved and anonymous, my night on that train would have undoubtedly been more restful and pleasant, but my status as a minority drew the attention of those of the majority and forced me to act differently.

On the train I began to think that I was strange and that my actions were out of place, so I adjusted them to fit in, but every action that I tried was met with the same response and I eventually attempted something of non-action to gain some sort of imagined approval. Non-action was still not an appropriate way out and so I eventually retreated into my subconscious mind through sleep. These adjustments of my activities have continued for such an extended period of time that it has caused me to question myself, caused me to question my actions as to weather they are my own or a product of some psychological phenomenon of the majority’s will being imposed upon my own psyche.


Personal space is something that I have long since taken as an automatic and subconscious gift to other members of the human species. A good explanation of personal space is offered in a paper by the Department of Psychology at Princeton University, they describe it as follows: ‘Many researchers noted that humans have an invisible bubble of protective space surrounding the body, generally larger around the head, extending farthest in the direction of sight. When that personal space is violated, the person steps away to reinstate the margin of safety. Personal space, therefore, is the flight zone [space in which the flight or fight response is provoked] of a human with respect to other humans. The size of the personal space varies depending on context. A person who is placed in a potentially threatening context will have an expanded personal space; a person in friendly company will have a reduced personal space. In this view, personal space is fundamentally a protective space, a margin of safety.’

It is well known that Western societies, which tend to be more individualistic, subconsciously allot a greater amount of personal space per person than the more collectivist societies of the East. For this reason I have come to feel that my personal space has been lost to me here in India. A fine example of this lies in yet another train journey, this time between Old Goa and Mumbai. Admittedly the confines of a train require a certain adjustment of personal space, but in this particular journey my personal space was not only violated, but crushed to non-existence.

It was around five o’clock in the evening that three friends and I boarded a 20-hour train from Old Goa, in the unreserved section, heading for Mumbai. We had been on the waiting list for 3-tiered non-A/C seats but had not had the good fortune to get even one seat. When we entered the unreserved section of the train we found it pleasantly empty. We claimed one of the wooden benches and settled in. There was just room enough so that one of us could curl up into a small ball while the other two sat side by side (it was in this manner that we planned to sleep in shifts during the course of the night).

As nighttime fell, more and more people began to get on the train. People filled the luggage racks and we were eventually asked to move over by a small elderly woman. We politely obliged giving up any chance of sleep on the over night train. More people arrived and began sitting on the floor. Soon thereafter we were asked yet again to move over to accommodate this man’s wife; the only way we could do this was to sacrifice the few centimeters of personal space that we had managed to secure despite the growing numbers on the train. My friends and I stole a quick glance at one another conveying that we weren’t comfortable giving up the small amount of personal space we had left, so we told the man as politely as possible to find another seat. This was met with a verbal argument escalating to a physical dispute. While repeatedly telling the man that I wasn’t going to move I got shoved, shaken, and slapped multiple times before he realized that I, in fact, was not going to move. He and his wife were forced to find a seat on the floor.

I had never been assaulted like that before in my life. I realized later on though that, although the man’s actions were wrong and there is never any excuse to resort to physical violence, we were both coming from a place of pure misunderstanding. Our rather frightening interaction was simply the result of cultural differences in the concept of personal space. To him our refusal to move over was simply unreasonable and irrational; we had the physical space to fit one more person, and he was unable grasp why we wouldn’t move over. To us it seemed obvious that there is a certain amount of space that is necessary to be psychologically comfortable and we couldn’t grasp how other people could sit in such close proximity to one another without feeling that discomfort. We managed to keep our space for that train journey and ended up sleeping away our time in Mumbai.


Less blatant at first, but no less prevalent, are my interactions with anyone wishing to sell me something. They see that I am from the West and assume that I am not only wealthy but foolish also, and thus charge me an obscenely inflated rate. In the end I usually get the same price as a local simply because I have been here for so long and know what things are actually worth, but merely the initial perception and categorization as "other" puts me off enough that I rarely shop.

The most common and therefore the most infuriating of these interactions is with auto rickshaw drivers from my house to the metro. The distance is exactly three kilometers and should therefore be twenty rupees. But autos assume that I am lost, being so far away from any tourist attraction, and they therefore begin the bargaining process at ridiculous fares, the highest of which was one hundred and fifty rupees!

To alleviate the negative psychological effects I feel from getting over charged for things, I always bargain and often simply wait until I attain the correct fare. This can take as long as a half hour and involves much frustration before I can be on my way from my home; again my status as "other" affects my actions because sometimes I don’t leave my house for the day simply to avoid having to go through this unpleasant ordeal.

What makes these interactions particularly objectionable is that they occur near where I live and therefore where I feel the most like I belong, so to be treated as "other" so consistently near my own home feels like a personal offence.

I thought that since I would be living in Delhi for so long I would begin to fit in and would therefore be treated as a local and left alone. This expectation was never delivered and I have continued to deal with being an outsider even in my own community.

An example of this is the all too regular amounts of verbal and physical harassment I endure while walking anywhere. Particular culprits tend to be school age children who are trying to show off for their friends. The first thing I usually hear is the word “englesie” (meaning “white person”) followed by some sort of Hindi cuss word then an eruption of laughter. This is generally followed up by the word “hello” being called out an uncomfortable number of times until I am out of earshot. Conspicuity makes "other" into the targets of ridicule and harassment, and a scapegoat for majority's anger or frustration.


I have had to deal with many personal struggles while here in India, the hardest of which were internal struggles of morals and feelings. One such struggle was how to respond to the overwhelming amount of poverty I witness daily. It would be impossible to give personal aid so many people, so how does one cope with the feelings of helplessness surrounding this issue?

My first response was the response most people have when placed in a psychologically painful and unavoidable situation, apathy or non-feeling. ‘I can’t care for all of these people, so I wont care for a single one,’ is the alternative my emotional body jumped upon as the solution to what would have been an emotional breakdown.

This response pervaded for the first four months of my time in India until one night in Bihar, the poorest state in India. I was in Bodgaya, a town inhabited almost exclusively by Buddhists and beggars. Many of the beggars were children between the ages of four and fourteen, which put a particular strain on the emotional wall I had constructed to keep myself apathetic. I sat down to eat at a restaurant located on the main stretch of road where many of the begging children spend their days and nights. I noticed a boy who was probably 12 years old watching me eat. I sat and ate my dinner while this hungry boy looked on. When I got up to leave he asked me for money and I ignored him as I had so many others.

Later that night I lay awake in awe and disgust of how cold and hard I had become. My psychological response that had been created initially to protect me from the overwhelming experience of seeing real poverty for the first time had become out dated and was now bordering on becoming inhuman. I swore from that night on to help as many people as I could in however small a way I could manage. The following morning I purchased some packages of channa and peanuts and went back to where the boy had been the night before, I found him begging there and when he came up to ask me for money I handed him a package and went on my way.

I realized that this small contribution was what I could afford as a traveling student and that was enough. It was out of fear that I was not offering some sort of contribution; fear of being taken advantage of, fear of being mobbed, fear of opening the flood gates that have been holding me together these last months in one of the harshest environments I’ve ever experienced. But none of my fears came into fruition and instead I felt as if I’ve salvaged a bit of my humanity in my newly rediscovered conviction to give aid to those I can.


Of the many things that are hidden from Westerners by their own government and social structure is death. Regardless of whether it is animal death, such as in a slaughterhouse, or human death, such as in an old folks home, death stays behind closed doors in most Western societies. So you can imagine my surprise to come to a culture that believes and makes visible that death is simply part of life.

The visibility of death, while present everywhere, was particularly visible to me in Varanasi. Known by many to be the cultural capitol of India, it is in Varanasi that the holy Manikarnika Ghat resides. Referred to by tourists as the “burning ghat” it is the holiest place for a Hindu to be cremated. It follows that it is a place where, on average, two hundred bodies are burned every day. Having only witnessed a deceased person once in my life I was a quite nervous when I saw the flames and smoke rising high into the air from the Manikarnika Ghat.

My fears were unnecessary and I ended up having quite the opposite reaction I was expecting to have. I thought I was going to be revolted, I even went on an empty stomach, but instead of revolt I felt a certain curiosity. Having been protected from death my whole life it was fascinating to watch the process take place. I looked on for two of the four hours it took for the funeral to be completed... The body was dipped in the Holy Ganges where the ashes and bones of previous cremations floated thick and black. Then it was dried and placed on the funeral pier, which was ceremonially lit by a sacred fire that has been burning continuously for 14,000 years. The smoke rose thick at first as the body began to catch. It smelled of campfire and the occasional waft of sandalwood.

After a few minutes the cloth that was draped over the body was burned away and the scene became very graphic; the head, lower legs, and hands were visible on the outskirts of the flames. After a while one of the workers made the fire collapse, using a long bamboo stick, and rotated the body. After an hour or so the body was no longer quite so defined and after three hours the flames were extinguished with water from the Ganges and the remaining bones thrown into the river. The whole process was carried out with business like efficiency, illustrating just how integrated death and life seem to be in the Eastern culture.

Animal death is also kept away from the general public in most Western cultures. Perhaps it is this reason that the West consumes far more meat and has far fewer vegetarians than most of the Eastern countries put together. In Varanasi I got the opportunity to see this animal death up close.

I was walking down the street and I came upon a chicken shop. From afar all I noticed at first was that there was a general gleaming red about the open shop front. I got a bit closer and realized that the red was blood and they were in the process of slaughtering and cleaning a large crate of chickens. Again I was curious and watched for a few minutes as the whole process was carried out swiftly and efficiently. I am interested to see if I am able to have witnessed these animal deaths and continue to eat meat when I get home; I don’t think I can.

After seeing these things I have a better understanding of what it means to die, it is no longer as foreign and frightening as I had once thought it to be. I don’t believe that it is desensitization, as many would argue, but rather an understanding and a personal acceptance that people and animals die and it is simply a fact of life. I believe that keeping it behind closed doors had made it seem taboo in Western cultures and thus people have uninformed ideas about it. We fear what we don’t know and before India I did not know death.


The most prevailing thing I have noticed about Indian culture is the presence of religion in people’s daily lives. There are multiple temples in every neighborhood; miniature temples appear on the sides of roads, in people’s homes, in people’s cars, on bikes and in shops, restaurants, office buildings, grocery stores. At sunrise and sunset the air rings with chants, songs and prayer (This sound is currently resonating in my very own ears from outside). How do they do it? In a nation where thousands of people starve each day or die for lack of clean water, how is spirituality so prevalent?

There is a psychological phenomenon described and studied by Abraham Maslow called the “Hierarchy of Needs.” In this hierarchy there are certain basic needs that have to be met before one can pursue other endeavors. His hierarchy starts with physiological needs such as food, water, sleep, good health, etc… it then moves on to safety, then cultural belonging, then self-esteem, and finally at the very top, after all other things have been taken care of, according to Maslow only then can we pursue what he calls self-actualization or spirituality. Yet India, perhaps out of a necessity of its own, seems to be an exception to this phenomenon.

I have tried to fuel my own spiritual flame while here in India with very little success. I find that too much distracts me here; be it cars honking outside, bacteria and viruses ravaging my insides, mosquitoes buzzing in my ears, or pollution choking my lungs, it is impossible for me to find peace in the only place in Delhi where I feel truly safe, my room. I have tried to find some sort of spiritual respite in holy places as well, from the Maha Bodi Buddhist temple in Bodgaya, to the quiet riversides of Rishikesh, everywhere I go to shut my eyes and look inward I am questioned by those of the Majority.

I have had a bit of a “Pavlov’s Dog” experience in that every time I try to look inward in any sort of public place, and now even in private spaces, an anxiety builds in me. This anxiety comes from being consistently interrupted from a meditative state by curious people asking me where I am from and what I am doing here. Sometimes even when I have ignored such people they will go as far as touch my shoulder to satisfy their burning curiosity! Similar to Pavlov’s Dog hearing a bell and receiving food, I have gone into a peaceful state and been roused by direct contact consistently enough that my attempt to meditate directly leads to anxiety, making the actual interruption unnecessary. My spirituality has thus become under the influence of the majority, yet again, making me question whether my spirituality inherently belongs to me or if strangers too can influence that search for self just as they have my actions.


The Western, and especially the American, conception of health is admittedly very skewed. In a culture where dieting and self-deprivation are a part of every day life, you find yourself getting caught up in it all. When I was home I was running ten kilometers a day and eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables; this did, in fact, make me feel really great, really energized. So when I came to India imagine my distress when I personally found the air unfit to run in and the people in charge of my program told me that if it wasn’t cooked I shouldn’t eat it. This was a big change for me and it has taken me a while to adjust, at first I didn’t understand how anyone could adjust.

If there is one thing that has influenced my health here in India it is the air pollution. I have developed a chronic cough that has left me feeling out of breath and unhealthy. The cause seems to be that the majority of people are simply uninformed about the effect that their actions have on the air quality in Delhi and, for that matter, all of South East Asia. I have seen more piles of burning trash, and more cars with excessive amounts of emissions, in Delhi than anywhere else in the world. These practices are happening all over South East Asia and as a result there is a brown cloud forming over India and parts of China that is leaving the air unfit to breathe.

I was wondering if the people of Delhi find it hard to breath as I was coughing profusely on one particularly polluted day. My answer was given to me on my way to the metro. I was sitting on the back of a cycle rickshaw coughing up black stuff as the cycle driver puffed along just fine in the thick Delhi air. Some people to my left waiting at a bus stop smoked happily as an auto rickshaw drove by at top speed leaving a cloud of black smog to diffuse into the already grey air. Across the street to my right, what looked like street children danced merrily around a pile of burning trash, the fumes rising to meet their laughter.

I was having a moment of incomprehensibility about how they were not coughing, as I was, when I realized the nature of the human being, eloquently described in a passage of Viktor E Frankl’s book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ “I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could endure: we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that and a severe vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever before. We had to wear the same shirts for half a year, until they had lost all appearance of being shirts. For days we were unable to wash, even partially, because of frozen water-pipes, and yet the sores and abrasions on hands which were dirty from work in the soil did not suppurate. Or for instance, a light sleeper, who used to be disturbed by the slightest noise in the next room, now found himself lying pressed against a comrade who snored loudly a few inches from his ear and yet slept quite soundly through the noise… Yes, a man can get used to anything.” (Frankl; 1946)

That being said, I have adjusted to life in India. I have adjusted to cold showers, all manners of deep fried street food, lack of exercise, the unavailability of silence, and even, to a certain degree, the grey air that I grudgingly breathe into my lungs. Given a year or two I am certain that I wouldn’t even notice the burning trash on the corner, or the black fumes coming out of the back of a rickshaw; and I certainly wouldn’t notice that the air that I had been breathing for years was anything different than what air is supposed to be like. And so, as my health declines, I feel normal; my body and my psyche has adjusted to the changes that have occurred in my life and I, as a member of the resilient human species, regardless of my present minority or majority status, accept my condition and continue on.


I was told before coming to India that I should prepare myself to face the most emotionally trying and psychologically draining experience I would ever have. People warned me about the poverty, they warned me about the tourist scams, they warned me about the over priced goods, the pollution, the staring, etc… As a result my expectations for coming here were very grim, and I adjusted my psyche accordingly. I prepared myself to face all those experiences, and more, through subconsciously closing down my emotions behind a protective psychological barrier, thus numbing my feelings to a mere whisper of what they would have been otherwise. This strategy has served me well and I have found myself in a place of resigned acceptance of all that I see and all that happens to me here. But after that incident with the hungry boy in Bihar, this strategy stopped being okay with me. Here I was the minority attempting to make a small impact on what the majority takes for granted.

I have been trying ever since to dismantle my barriers, to really feel what it is like to be here. But my subconscious is too strong; I couldn’t break free of that barrier, and so, after a few weeks of being hard on myself, I have once again accepted it. I have changed my actions significantly so that I am mentally okay with how I am acting here in India, but I have kept my emotional barriers. I will now give food to the beggars on the streets of Delhi, but I can’t sympathize with them; I will now talk to the people who talk to me on the street, but I will not let them influence my decisions; I have softened in my actions, but have remained steady in my psyche.

There is a wonderful quote from Kahlil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ that states, “But if in your fear you would seek only [life’s] peace and [life’s] pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of [life’s] threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.” (Gibran; 1923) I have essentially covered my “nakedness,” my vulnerability, and moved into a space where I am able to cope with the ups and downs of my minority experience on a more level field. I don’t feel that this is a good thing, I also don’t feel that it is a bad thing, it is just a coping mechanism that I, coming from such an entirely different culture, have to work with.


The experience of being a minority has been very influential on me. I feel that when I return to the United States I will be a much more culturally sensitive and racially tolerant person. Coming to India in general has been the most worthwhile psychological journey I have ever taken. The challenges that I have faced as a Westerner coming into an Eastern society have been great, but because of those challenges I am a more aware, open-minded, and well-rounded human being. The adjustments that I have made coming here will stay with me for the rest of my life as psychological tools that I may call upon when needed. Just as our immune systems remember foreign substances, my mind will be able to launch a much more efficient coping mechanism to all the various experiences I have had should they come up again in my life. Also, from this time spent as a cultural minority, I have learned how to be more effective in my personal experience as a "majority of ONE".









Bibliography


Frankl, E. Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press, 1984.


Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Random House, Inc, 1969.


Graziano, S.A. Michael, & Cooke, F. Dylan. “Parieto-frontal interactions, personal space, and defensive behavior.” Neuropsychologia Nov. 2005: Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. .


“Maslow’s Hierarchy.” Changing Minds.org. 2002-2008.

An empty mind is God's workshop

Escapism! Laziness! Unproductivity! Such are the terms that the most crucial element for all psychic growth is derided with. All the great men who shaped the collective destiny of mankind were men of leisure. No office going clerk could have become a Socrates nor would have a king perpetually preparing his armies to sate his gargantuan land-hunger become the Buddha. The higher subtleties of the human experience cannot be accessed except through freedom from the trammels of drudgery and repititive labor. What is meditation but an effort to bring the mind in a state of voluntary leisure - an open receptivity without clinging to any psychological labor. What made man free from mere animal existence was his erect position and the resultant leisure that the hands got form the labor of walking. The mind busy with material concerns is incapable of attaining insight.
Yet it is a mad rush which is the all-pervading feature of the sick world of today. Mad commercialization and a frontal attack on ecology is threatening to throw humanity in a crisis. Even economically, what the world needs is leisure. If all people were to do only one-third of the work they do at present, three times the present workforce would be required and everybody would be readily employed. Per capita productivity must be lowered to increase employment. This is possible only when human interest rather than monetary or pseudo-economic models decide policy and its implementation.

Three Monks

Shankar : Brethren, this debate which I am having with you exists only as an appearance in the sphere of individuated consciousness. The consciousness which pervades the phenomenal universes is one unified essence. The first dream is of my being Shankar and the projection of that dream is your being Ramanuj and Madhav in the primary dream of the imaginary being conveniently named ‘Shankar’. The consciousness within which the unitary essence appears as three distinct individuals having a heated discussion on the fundamental nature of being is holistic.

Madhav : You are engaged in a cunning play with words! How can the object ever be perceived unless it has an existence, distinct from the perceiver? I see food and eat it to sate my hunger. If I, the food and the process of eating are one and the same, I should be just as happy without having to eat the food. That , however, would lead to hunger and ultimately starvation. If you consider reality to be unified, whu don’t you eat burning coals instead of cooked rice?

Shankar : Brother, give me burning coals and I would eat them for they are That. And I am That!

Madhav : You may have some special yogic power to digest what is inedible for the common populace. Yet, that doesn’t apply to the multitude. Besides such a trick can hardly be ground for inferring the unity of the perceiver and the perceived. If you are what I too am, why don’t you express vedantic aphorisms through my mouth
? I challenge you to do that. It is my distinct personality which allows me to have a differential grasp on the perceived world.

Shankar : I would say you are that part of my being, which is still ignorant of its fundamental nature!

Madhav : How impertinent!

Ramanuj : Venerable Shankar, how do you account for the deep devotion which the soul naturally feels for a perfect personal God. Can such a pure emotion arise for an imaginary being? A Supreme being of perfect divinity would be necessary for inspiring such love.

Shankar : The love is the natural desire of the ‘individuated’ to merge into its true unified essence. No external being can ever inspire my love. A lover loves his beloved for he sees his own essence in her, he loves her for differential expression of his own intimate essence.

Ignorance

One of the causes for the emergence of the universe cited in Indian philosophy is ‘Avidya’ or cosmic ignorance. It seems some thinkers speculated or got the meditation-inspired insight that the cosmos is a mere ‘appearance’ which has its being in the deep ignorance which created the notion of multiplicity through the sense of ‘ego’ or individuated existence. Such a rupture in the ‘unified’ consciousness led to the emergence of an infinity of worlds with numerous beings inhabiting them, through a causal chain of karma. While it has been described in a variety of shades, karma can be seen as some kind of action in which consciousness is entwined through an ignorant identification with ‘individuated being’. Such an action is a link in an almost infinite causal chain which sustains the appearance of individuated existence. The idea is that the sense of being distinct from the world at large gives a plethora of experiences to the emergent ‘subject of experience’ but also constrains the said subject by creating a false yet binding barrier between it and existence at large. An analogy which the proponents of ‘pure non-dualism’ or nirguna advaita give to explain their assertion of the truth of unity beneath the perceived multiplicity is the dream experience. Just as in a dream, a man sees himself with, say, a beautiful princess, surrounded by numerous attendants and under a dark sky with countless stars, yet finds on waking up that he alone is real while the stars, princess and countless attendants were all projections of his own consciousness, similarly the universe with an infinity of beings is the projection of pure consciousness. Here, a subtle but crucial difference between the advaita view of pure consciousness and the dream analogy is that while the dreamer is a unified individual, the consciousness in which the cosmic dream appears is impersonal, though personality appears as the first begotten son. To clarify, the infinite is beyond the distinctions of subject and object. However, as the manifest cosmos appears from the unmanifest essence, the sovereign ruler of the manifest also simulataneously appears as the “Ishvara”. Here, Ishvara( literally, the ruler) is the cosmic personality or the divine transcendental Super-Self. While individual souls can pray to God and be recipient of His abundant bounty, they must necessary transcend God to be liberated beyond the trap of duality. Thus the Godhead is a stage of realization, not its consummation. The God that appears in ignorance is the God of ignorance and hence must be dissolved through the deepest triumph of meditation. And beyond ignorance, there is neither a God nor any devotee.

Ink vapors

Who writes a poem on a printed page?

Let my tears wipe off all that my past has written.

And let the ink vaporize into the blessed ether.

And the white paper fly way beyond all horizons.

ICE

That which existence blesses with being has a raw potency which no glassy ideology can ever weaken. . For logic is the shadow of reality. Logic is created as a figurative interpretation for the possible which has the existent as its most manifest evidence.
Population is rising. AIDS is spreading. Bigotry and grossly vulgarized ‘religious’ nonsense is being openly propagated. That pollution is happening is the license for its propagation. That which happens finds its own logic Frost saw the world ending either in the fire of heedless passion or the ice of indifference. While ecologists are crouching under the fear of global warming, it’s the ice of cowardly apathy which causes the rising temperature. We, the ‘educated’ people, the ‘intelligentsia’, are happy in our abstract ivory towers while environment is being defiled, terrorism bred and gross inequalities celebrated by the naked display of filthy lucre. To see the obviously harmful and remain a moot spectator is to garnish the evil recipe. What makes a health-conscious individual to bear passive smoking in a crowded bus or a University student to be silent while dry leaves and trash are burnt in the campus, openly polluting the very air he breathes?
To cut through the momentum of evil which gains its potency through an ever-widening vertex of spread requires the most determined and steadfast effort which should have as its origin a power which has roots much deeper than the conviction of its truth. Evil is an integral part of every philosophy which has its origin in the fecund mud of this earth. Virtue needs the conception of evil for its functional definition. When the idea of bad doesn’t exist, the dream of the good too vanishes. Yet the human inside us strives for the absolute splendor of pure bliss. When such purity is deemed ‘uncontaminated’, the idea that pollution exists and is so potent AS TO BE THE KEY IN DEFINING THE ABSOLUTE ( THROUGH ITS ABSENCE) is not far to seek.

Vibration and Effulgence

“ To remember the ‘name’ is knowledge; to forget it, ignorance. “ – Eknath.

( This is the interview of a spiritual friend which I conducted recently for a paper to be submitted in a psychological conference.)

Shri Bhag Singh is a small businessman in Punjab. He takes non-vegetarian food and doesn’t go to religious places any more than a man in his station would to satisfy societal obligations. Meeting him as he deals with rustic customers who want a battery refilled or some other electric thing done, you would never be reminded of any saint. However, you would be stuck by his cheerful mien and horse –sense; a man well at home in his own little world. But as you probe further, your perceptions would change.
This sixty-three years old man says he has ‘inherited’ mysticism from his paternal grandmother, who , he claims, was a saint. When asked , what spirituality is, he replies, “ Spirituality is an intelligent power, beyond the senses, but within the ambit of experience - an everlasting way.” He further elaborates, “ Accessible through the grace of an ‘enlightened Master’, the power is within and without the universe.” I asked him what he meant by an enlightened man. He answered , “ An enlightened man is one in conscious touch with the audible vibration of consciousness, which can be distinctly perceived as a reverberating sound.”

Q : Since when have you been meditating?

A : Right from my childhood.

Q : When did you experience the ‘sound vibration’ for the first time?

A : I was 33 years old when I had my first experience of the ‘sound current’.

Q : What was the trigger for this experience?

A : I was sitting in my room, meditating on a mantram.

Q : Which mantram?

A: That’s hardly important.

Q : I would like to know.

A : I was meditating on ‘ Sohung Hung sau’ ( Literally means, I and the essence of the universe are One.)

Q : Did anybody initiate you into this mantram?

A : Swami Ram Das Ji , who used to work in IAAS, Shimla, and was visiting my hometown, Malout.

Q : What exactly did you perceive?

A : A whistle like sound reverberating inside me; resembling the aftereffect of a whistle rather than a whistle per se.

Q : Were you meditating specifically to hear this nada?

A : No. Meditation on a mantram was a part and parcel of my life since childhood.

Q : Were you aware of the existence of ‘anahata nada’?

A : I had heard that there is something known as ‘anahata nada’ but had no experience prior to that night.

Q : What exactly was your experience?

A : I heard the ‘sound current’, resembling a whistle.

Q : Where did you perceive it, in the ear or the skull?

A : I heard it first it in the left ear, then in the right.

Q : How did the ‘sound current’ effect you?

A : There was no particular effect that night.

Q : Was there any sensation in your body that night?

A : No.

Q : What did you do about that experience?

A : I told about it to my Guru.

Q : Had your Guru told you such a ‘sound current’ would result due to mantram meditation?

A : No.

Q : What was his response?

A : He congratulated me saying I had experienced what seekers of all time and climes pine for. He said the sound current would increasingly become more intense. He described the ‘sound current’ as the bridge between soul (individuated consciousness) and God (absolute consciousness). He told me bliss would come as the sound stabilizes.

Q : What were your worldly circumstances at the time of this experience?

A : I was going through an economic crisis. Business wasn’t well.

Q : When did you start meditating?

A : I was interested in meditation since childhood. I was into mental repetition of mantram since childhood. However, it was a routine thing then. I did it mechanically without much conscious effort.

Q : What discipline such as pranayama ( breath control) etc. did you follow?

A : I am very different from your notions of a yogi. I followed no pranayama or asana (body posture). I didn’t deny myself liquor or animal food. And I had no routine time set aside for meditation.

Q: What did the sound current do to you?

A : The sound current began from ears and increase in intensity. It spread all around my skull and then got concentrated at the top of my skull. My present state is that of continuous awareness of the primordial vibration at the top of my skull – 24 hrs. a day.

Q: When did you experience ‘the inner light’?

A : I had a glimpse of the ‘inner effulgence’ between 1980 and ’85. As I experienced the ‘effulgence’, I lost all consciousness of space, time and body. So long as there is awareness of the ‘effulgence’, there is no consciousness of space, time or the body. Yet, awareness is profound, though without any subject-object differentiation.

Q: How often are you aware of ‘anahata nada’?

A: 24 hrs a day.

Q: Did you ever block your ears with fingers or ear-plugs when trying to get in touch with the ‘anahata nada’?

A: No. I never did.

Q: When did you experience the ‘inner effulgence’? What was the color of the light?

A: I had my first glimpse of the effulgence close to 1980. The colors appeared in succession – red, violet, saffron, yellow and azure.

Q : Did you experience white effulgence then?

A : No, not white.

Q : When did you experience ‘white effulgence’?

A : I had a glimpse of ‘white effulgence’ in late 80s.

Q : What was the effect of your inner experiences on your day to day life?

A : Initially, I wanted to enjoy the bliss of anahata in solitude. Now, it makes no difference whether I am sitting alone in my room or busy working. The experience of anahata is always there irrespective of the external situation.

Q: What do you feel when aware of the anahata?

A: I feel neither happiness, nor sorrow. You could say it’s a kind of shamelessness. For instance, I felt no sorrow when my young son, and later my brother died. It was all the same to me. All is anahata- all is awareness. Material bodies come and go.

Q: Did you feel absolutely no grief when your young son died?

A: What the social occasion demanded came out of me. There was no sense of personal loss.

Q: Is meditation a means for happiness?

A: In meditation, there is no desire of any kind.

Q: What then, is meditation?

A: That which is, Is not. That which is not, Is.

Q: If I am not to gain any happiness out of it, why am I to meditate?

A: The world is engaged in a mad race – a futile chase, hankering after fleeting pleasures which contain seeds of pain. Every worldly activity, what is seen and heard, what is desired and achieved or lost, contains seeds of suffering. Meditation burns these seeds, frees you from the worldly rat race.

Q: Is happiness a result of meditation?

A: Just as mediation frees you from suffering, so does it liberate you from happiness.

Q: But I don’t want freedom from happiness. I would rather bear pain in hope of some experience of happiness. I want happiness. Absolute unlimited happiness is my desire. If I cannot get absolute happiness, I would have some happiness and some pain rather than a state of being free of both happiness and suffering. What good would such a state be to me where I won’t have any experience of happiness?

A: What you think is happiness and grasp as such, is fleeting and contains seeds of its own destruction. Meditation would give you the real and free you from useless tethers.

Q: It seems like a blank state to me- would I become a vegetable after meditating- feeling neither happiness nor sorrow, blank in mind. I would like to have at least fleeting pleasures even if suffering sullies them – rather than kill all my emotions.

A: Only after you are liberated from the vertex of happiness or sorrow would you know the true bliss- the pure effulgence of the unitary awareness. What you are playing with now are causally entwined emotions of pain and pleasure, the one leading to the other.

Q: You say there is no awareness of body, space or time in the state of complete absorption (Samadhi). That happens in deep dreamless sleep. How is Samadhi any different from sleep?

A: In Samadhi effulgence and vibration exist and you are that effulgence and that vibration. There is no individuation. That doesn’t happen in sleep when neither you nor any other entity exists. Sleep is emptiness. Samadhi is pure bliss. The experience of Samadhi is a profound awareness of inner effulgence and vibration sans individuality.

Q: How is the inner effulgence any different from physical light, say, that of sun?

A: The effulgence is of the nature of conscious bliss. It is neither inner nor outer but the only substratum of reality upon which the images of waking, dreaming and sleeping existence are entwined. And I have experienced it. It can be experienced by anyone by deep concentration on the audible vibration which appears when the mind is in a state of profound awareness without any object of reference. It’s a living experience rather than any theory or philosophical notion. The physical sun and other such objects are the shadows of pure consciousness.

Q: Is faith on the Guru’s word or scriptures a pre-requisite for meditational experience?

A: Right meditation is a technique which doesn’t call for any faith. However the commitment to practice it has to be there. If you follow the technique without faith, the result would come. If you have blind faith but don’t follow the method, no result would ensue.

My Model

A friend said every seeker follows a model which colors his perception while talking about his experiences. I found much sense in his view . So, here is my rough model, based on the general framework of 'anahata nada' ( cosmic effulgence of consciousness and audible life stream ):-


1.) ‘ Infinite bliss of pure being’ is the great supreme purity of blessed consciousness which is the highest happiness and is beyond all appearances, attributes and individuation of any kind. It’s the true essense of everything that appears to have an individuated existence, from the entire universe to the sun to me and you and the chair on which you are sitting. ‘ The Infinite Bliss of Pure Being’ corresponds with ‘PARAMATMAN’ or the infinite bliss beyond the apparent individuated essence.

2.) The first and primary emanation which appears from the ‘INFINITE BLISS OF PURE BEING’ is the great AUM consciousness from which the great effulgence of pure consciousness appears. This is the effulgence which is experienced by yogis as the brightness of a million suns shining as one. Bliss and the greatest happiness which fills the innermost recesses of being is the primary attribute of this effulgence. The great cosmic symphony described as AUM or the word ( gospel of john/bible), logos( Greek mystics), Udgitha etc. is the ‘AUDIBLE LIFE STREAM’ which emanates from AUM along with the effulgence. This audible life stream too has bliss or the greatest happiness as its primary attribute.The AUM consciousness corresponds with the ATMAN or the apparent individuated essence.

3.) As the AUM consciousness with its sphere of effulgence and audible vibration involutes or descends a bit, the CAUSAL SPHERE ( Karana ) comes into manifestation which too has bliss , though now somewhat individuated as its primary attribute.This corresponds with the sheath or covering of ‘BLISS’( Anandamayi kosha).

4.) With further involution of the AUM consciousness, the SUBTLE SPHERE OF ENERGY(appears from the causal realm. It must be noted that this is conscious energy of divinity and very different from the material energy studied by physicists. Consciousness takes the gross form of energy. This corresponds with the sheaths of pure INTELLIGENCE( Buddhimayi kosha) and pure EMOTION( manomayi kosha).

5.) The involution of the sphere of energy into the GROSS SPHERE OF MATTER( jara) occurrs when energy is transformed into matter. Consciousness appears as apparently lifeless in the form of rocks, earth, fire, physical light, electricity etc..( Its extremely important to remember that the effulgence of AUM experienced in meditation is the light of consciousness with extreme bliss and pure consciousness as its attribute and hence is very different from the physical light, say of sun. Besides the effulgence of AUM doesn’t cast any shadow which physical light does.)

6.) As involution occurrs, the three spheres interact with each-other and exist in tandem with one of them having prominence in its sphere of power rather than as isolated realms. Thus within the earth experience, the gross frequencies appear as the minerals, soil, rocks etc. while the subtle frequencies appear as sentient beings ( birds, fishes, animals etc.) and the more subtle frequencies appear as human beings.

Abridged from 'Reality is Imagined.'

AUM consciousness - beyond the senses

Meditation is experiential rather than experimental. Its an experience beyond the sense-fields rather than an experiment within them. All science is within the purview of the intellect while meditation begins after the intellect has been transcended. From the great infinite bliss of pure being, an emanation appears in the form of a cosmic music or great vibration of harmony. This is the great ‘AUM’ sphere. Causal, subtle and gross universes emerge from it, appear to be for a few billion apparent years and are finally dissolved in the primeval ‘AUM field of consciousness’ which itself merges into ‘ Infinite Bliss of Pure Being’ beyond all creation , vibration and emanation. This great AUM consciousness is the cause of light and sound spheres which grossify as the material universe in which individuated frequencies which are relatively less gross appear as sentient beings ( like human beings) while the frequencies which are relatively more gross appear as matter dubbed ‘non-living’ ( say rocks, soil etc.). It must be noted that in essence, matter is consciousness itself. The modern string theory and some features of sub-atomic quantum physics have some interesting things to say about the similarities between the most advanced science and mysticism ( read for instance, ‘ The Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra, an eminent physicist , who also had a beautiful mystic experience; also the talks between J. Krishnamurti, a mystic and David Bohm, the physicist, which are available in book-form and also online and on youtube).

Abridged from 'Reality is imagined'

Being beyond Attributes

The Blessed Infinity is absolutely free from all attributes or qualities. It's free beyond freedom, beautiful beyond beauty and blessed beyond bliss. It is greater that greatness itself and more powerful than the very essence of power. It is completely ineffable yet all words describe it alone. You cannot know it, you must BE it. And you are already IT but for your mistaken delusion of individuality.The immense hypnotism which makes you believe I am so and so, born at this or that date, of this species, gender and age, with this human body, keeps you in the dream of individuality. Reality is as imagined as imagination is real. To an average human being, the talk of infinite bliss beyond creation would seem like a fable or a dream. However, it is he who is the fable and the dream while infinite bliss the only reality.What the infinite bliss is can never be described or even known except by merging into it once and forever, never to return back. Whoever comes back would not be the one who merged. The one who enters samadhi is not the one who comes out of samadhi and in the samadhi no individuated being is present; for samadhi is the purity of being beyond any individuation. This ‘infinite bliss of pure being’, free from all attributes and individuation, which seems so far away and looks like a fable is in truth, your , mine and this laptop’s own intimate essence, while all that you and I feel we are, say a 24 years old psycholgy student with a passion for chess, is in truth a fable and a mere dream. You may accuse me of turning the commonsense idea of reality upside down, but as I said earlier, ‘Reality is as imagined as imagination is real.’ Common sense would have you believe that the sun revolves around the earth ( that’s how it ‘appears’ and that’s what many primitives believed and the Bible says), that there is nothing similar to atoms or electrons( they are not evident to senses)and that the flying of an airplane made of metal is impossible( that’s what many eminent scientists believed before the Wright brothers turned their wisdom upside down). Even specific sense , such as that possessed by experimental scientists suffers from the limitation that it operates within the six sense fields ( the five primary senses and the mind which is treated as a sense in Indian thought).
Abridged from 'Reality is imagined'

The Waking Dream

In the night, when you go off to sleep and start dreaming, it can also be said that you wake up from 'the waking dream' to 'the dreaming wakefulness'! My take on mysticism suffers from an ‘Indian/Hindu’ bias because being an Indian and having found the maximum intellectual and emotional satisfaction from Vedanta and Upanishadic thought, I use that idiom in talking about mysticism. However mysticism transcends all frames of reference which belong to the limited sphere of the human experience. Mysticism sees ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ as the eternal essence of all existence. The great infinite is ever-new bliss, purest existence and the highest truth. It is beyond the individuated Godhead. God emerges out of the great infinite. However the idea of an individuated God is by no means necessary as we can see from Buddhism and Jainism. All that is needed for the universe to come forth is for the blessed infinity to ‘appear’ in the progressively materialized causal ( or ideational), subtle ( or energy) and gross ( or material) spheres of being. These spheres are mere appearences. They just ‘appear’ to exist while it is always the blessed infinity which ‘really’ exists ( The whole universe is only an illusion but a very persistent one- Einstein).The ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ is not consumed or used up in any manner due to such appearances but stays intact in its true essence.While the infinite bliss causes all creation, it is by no means affected by it. There is no analogy for mystic truths. However to convey a rough idea, think about the myriad clouds that appear in the sky without affecting it. Clouds are formed, play in the sky and ultimately vanish. The sky holds them all but is never affected in essence due to their presence or absence. I again want to reiterate that all analogies do a rather poor job of explaining mysticism. They are used only to aid understanding but only true experience can take you one step closer to the blessed truth.
(abridged from 'Reality is Imagined')

My twin beloveds

I have two beloveds, and I keep on switching between them; or more accurately, they keep on playing with my being. I cannot exist, but in the lap of one of them, and being kissed by one means being away from the other, for they like not each other’s company. Indeed, they share only a mutual hatred and shrink away from each another’s sight. Or probably, they are jealous. Or, I may not know the mystic pathway where they dally in a common laughter. I love both of them; though express it to only one at a time. They are exact opposites, yet have their own charms. One is vibrant and playful, yet fleeting and full of caprice; the other dark and forbidding from exterior and illuminating and effulgent in her inner essence. One is vivacious and thrives in company; the other somber and aloof and loves solitude. One is jovial and ever-new; the other philosophical and ancient. One is the best for plays of passion; the other good for a nice rest after lots of hard work. In the origin of my ecstasy, I kiss the first and I sleep in the long black tresses of the second in its culmination. I cannot exist without them and I love both of them. You may accuse me of promiscuousness but they aren’t loyal to me either. Both have numerous other love-interests, one in her hot kisses and the other in her all encompassing embraces. Yet, when with me, they are absolutely mine.
They are my eternal beloveds, the twin mysteries - ‘Life’ and ‘Death’.



This has been inspired by Mayank's post :-
http://totallybaked.blogspot.com/2006/02/she-flirts-with-me-everyday.html

Rejuvenate

Rejuvenate


3 Lakes

3 Valleys

3 Towns

3 Themes





Thematic Excursion















Life is an alpine journey. You need to walk on many craggy paths to reach the lofty heights of wisdom. You get a better view of the peaks of virtue from the valley of sin. Yet the panorama of existence is revealed only at the pinnacle of tranquility. The brook of insight emerges from the glacial snows of contemplation. We invite you to the Himalayas to rejuvenate your spirit under the benevolent glance of nature.
















Mystic Odyssey

Troy made heroes of mere mortals but it was his protracted voyage to Ithaca that made Odysseus drink the cup of life to the last drop.
Find your Ithaca with us.

















Soul Mountain


Discover yourself in the Himalayas









Lake of wisdom

Gift of Padmasambhava

An evening with Rinpoche, the precious master

At

Rewalsar

Also known as Guru Rinpoche, the precious master, it was Padmasambhava who made Mahayana Buddhism take root in Tibet. Legend has it that he created the lake through meditation- and at Rewalsar waters, his spirit is said to reside in the tiny islands of reed that drift over the waters.



Get an insight into creating lasting changes.




Town of wisdom

Gift of the cow

Mandi

Get an insight into Indian archetypes

Legend has it that it was here that the phenomenon of a cow, washing a shivlinga with milk that was released on its own accord, occurred.

Touch the soul of India

Lake of Peril

Challenge of Pandavas

A morning with the five princes

At

Kunt Bhyog

These lakes are associated with the escape of the Pandavas from the burning palace of wax – an episode from the epic, Mahabharata.


Probe Crisis Management

Lake of tranquility

Joy of Parashar

An evening with the sage at

Parashar Lake

With deep blue waters, this beautiful lake is held sacred to the sage Parashar who meditated here. A three-tiered pagoda dedicated to the sage lies by the lake.


Abide in Joy

Learn the art of spontaneous living

Valley of Wisdom

Gift of the musk-deer

Barot

The musk-deer is allured by its fragrance when it comes of age and searches for its source frantically without realizing it comes from within. The luxuriant Nargu wildlife sanctuary is home to the musk-deer.


Get an insight into your hidden potential.

Town of Peril

Challenge of the unknown

Palampur

Amid lush green tea-gardens, explore your subconscious and its effect on your waking existence. Are there any dark shadows lingering in you? See them in the light of introspection and watch them disappear.

Open Johari Window

Enlighten your dark spots


Valley of peril

Challenge of the abyss

Andretta

Helen Keller was born blind, deaf and dumb. This didn’t prevent her from becoming a distinguished author and thinker. How would you cope with an hour of enforced sensory deprivation?

Discover the light behind the eyes

Transcend your limits



Valley of Tranquility

Joy of Shiva

Bhagsu Nag

An evening with the lord

The universes inhere as blessed ideas in the cosmic mind of the ever-meditating Shiva, the auspicious one.

Get a holistic vision


Broaden your sphere of being

Town of Tranquility

Joy of Rigpa


McLeodGanj

The ‘Little Lhasa’ reverberates with the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism personified in HH The Dalai Lama. “Bardo” is the ‘moment of becoming’ and “Rigpa”is ‘inherence in being.’


See things as they are

Shed your conditioning

Radiance of Being

‘The bliss of pure being’ has 'the creative sphere of infinite potential' as its natural effulgence. Myriad desires appear in this sphere as the natural radiance of the great bliss. To know all desires as the natural radiance of ‘the sphere of infinite potential’ which emanates from ‘the bliss of pure being’ is to accept their rise and merger without being engulfed by them .The radiance is not, in essence, different from the purity of bliss but the natural expression of its innate expanding self-exploration.The inherent tendency of the radiance is to emerge from, shine or play around and merge back into the infinite bliss. To know this is to play the variegated sport of nature while remaining firmly established in spirit. Thus ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ stands revealed.

Together

Before the ancient joy burst into an infinity of stars, you were together. Together you multiplied to embark on a voyage of stars. Together you created worlds from the mists of your shared desire and together you parted in your unity. You seek each-other while being what you seek. Your desires are faint echoes of your fullness. Yet you explore your limits by groping the darkness of separation. From the valley of sin, you have a better view of the peak of virtue.But you are neither the valley nor the peak. The sky kisses both and yet remains aloof. But even the sky doesn't penetrate you. You are your own fulfillment. Together would you find your song and the dream of separation would merge into joy.

Eternal Moment

A moment exists independent of all past; free from all future. Eternal and immutable, it is acausal and without any effect into the future.The linkage between two moments is a delusion created by mental co-ordination. When we profess eternal love to people we can't bear the sight of later, the moment doesn't die; the moment of eternal love. Multitudes have wished eternal love and multitudes would do it. They will all perish and their beloveds merge into nothingness but the smiling moment would ever remain.An eternal moment of eternal love.

For Priyanka

We couldn’t walk together
for the path was steep and auburn at your side
and I was besotted by the moon’s scent
which took me to the vast expanse
from where your river wasn’t visible

You, young fawn, are playful
yet you eat not the fruit of joy
for thorns have their charm
though blood makes you tremble

The brook of passion is yours’
but its waves are flickering
and dreams vanish with the stars
leaving a lucid memory behind

Kiss the hot lips of passion
but lose not the breath of life
play with the burning candles
only to blow them off in sun

Your wounds are alive in me
and the pain in them rejoices
to find fertile ground for love
which deepens the dark night

Go in tornadoes unfazed
play with fierce tigers
or sleep with wolves
I would not let them touch you
or make you the prey of harm

My fullness is your becoming
the explosion is the thunder
which would make you rainfed
with joy of the infinite

Symbology Of Vaishno Devi Legend

It was at the shrine that I learnt the legend of the young ascetic girl, whom the tantrik Bhairav, the star-disciple of the Nath Yogi Gorakhnath, tried to molest. The girl fled from her tormenter and hid in the cave called ‘garbh-joon’ ( birth through womb) for nine months to meditate deeply. When Bhairav located her there, she fled to the peak where the court of the Goddess is now located. Bhairav chased her to the peak. On reaching the peak, the girl took the awesome form of the Goddess and beheaded Bhairav with one powerful stroke which made his head fly away to a point two kilometres away , where the temple of Bhairav is now located. Bhairava’s soul begged for the Goddess’ forgiveness before leaving the mortal coil. In Her infinite grace, the Goddess forgave Bhairav and granted him final salvation or moksha, the aim of human existence. Thus, Bhairav was triumphant even in his death. This , of course looks like an incredible fable. However, it is the symbology which is important. ‘Bhairav’ is symbolic of the ‘mumuksha’ or the aspirant who seeks moksha or final liberation from the cycle of individuation and de-individuation of consciousness( birth and death). The girl, who later becomes the Goddess, is the creative power (Universal Nature) or Maya( cosmic hypnotic delusion) which gives an appearance of reality to the dream of human existence. Bhairava’s trying to molest the girl is symbolic of the seeker’s developing yogic insight ( that which unifies the individuated with the infinite is yogic) which makes him violate the profound hypnotism of maya. The girl’s fleeing to the cave of womb for nine months is symbolic of the evolution of Maya to increasingly subtle dimensions as meditation progresses ( The waking existence is gross while meditational realms are very subtle). Further the nine month period is symbolic of ritual rebirth of the sadhaka through meditation. The discovery of the girl in the womb by Bhairava after nine months is symbolic of the experience of the causal nature by the yogi. The girl’s flight to the peak and taking the form of the Great Goddess is the revelation of nature’s infinite power and majesty. Bhairava’s being beheaded by the Goddess is symbolic of the extinction of individuated existence of the yogi in the deepest samadhi ( In samadhi bliss remains but the enjoyer is transcended) when the cosmic hypnotic delusion liberates him from Her shackles by terminating his individuated existence. The forgiveness and moksha which she grants to Bhairava is what he always wanted . The forgiveness is due to the crime of transgressing maya before the dissolution of karma in its due course by the faster route of yoga or tantra ( thus transgressing Her hypnotic virginity or ‘molesting’ Her). Moksha is what Bhairava aspired for and for it, he adopted the faster route by violating the laws of nature. Thus he dissolved his being into ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ or blessed consciousness beyond the confines of nature .

Reality is Imagined

In the night, when you go off to sleep and start dreaming, it can also be said that you wake up from the waking dream to the dreaming wakefulness! My take on mysticism suffers from an ‘Indian/Hindu’ bias because being an Indian and having found the maximum intellectual and emotional satisfaction from Vedanta and Upanishadic thought, I use that idiom in talking about mysticism. However mysticism transcends all frames of reference which belong to the limited sphere of the human experience. Mysticism sees ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ as the eternal essence of all existence. The great infinite is ever-new bliss, purest existence and the highest truth. It is beyond the individuated Godhead. God emerges out of the great infinite. However the idea of an individuated God is by no means necessary as we can see from Buddhism and Jainism. All that is needed for the universe to come forth is for the blessed infinity to ‘appear’ in the progressively materialized causal ( or ideational), subtle ( or energy) and gross ( or material) spheres of being. These spheres are mere appearences. They just ‘appear’ to exist while it is always the blessed infinity which ‘really’ exists ( The whole universe is only an illusion but a very persistent one- Einstein).The ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ is not consumed or used up in any manner due to such appearances but stays intact in its true essence.While the infinite bliss causes all creation, it is by no means affected by it. There is no analogy for mystic truths. However to convey a rough idea, think about the myriad clouds that appear in the sky without affecting it. Clouds are formed, play in the sky and ultimately vanish. The sky holds them all but is never affected in essence due to their presence or absence. I again want to reiterate that all analogies do a rather poor job of explaining mysticism. They are used only to aid understanding but only true experience can take you one step closer to the blessed truth.
Now, this blessed infinity is absolutely free from all attributes or qualities. Its free beyond freedom, beautiful beyond beauty and blessed beyond bliss. It is greater that greatness itself and more powerful than the very essence of power. It is completely ineffable yet all words describe it alone. You cannot know it, you must BE it. And you are already IT but for your mistaken delusion of individuality.The immense hypnotism which makes you believe I am so and so, born at this or that date, of this species, gender and age, with this human body, keeps you in the dream of individuality. Reality is as imagined as imagination is real. To an average human being, the talk of infinite bliss beyond creation would seem like a fable or a dream. However, it is he who is the fable and the dream while infinite bliss the only reality.What the infinite bliss is can never be described or even known except by merging into it once and forever, never to return back. Whoever comes back would not be the one who merged. The one who enters samadhi is not the one who comes out of samadhi and in the samadhi no individuated being is present; for samadhi is the purity of being beyond any individuation. This ‘infinite bliss of pure being’, free from all attributes and individuation, which seems so far away and looks like a fable is in truth, your , mine and this laptop’s own intimate essence, while all that you and I feel we are, say a 24 years old psycholgy student with a passion for chess, is in truth a fable and a mere dream. You may accuse me of turning the commonsense idea of reality upside down, but as I said earlier, ‘Reality is as imagined as imagination is real.’ Common sense would have you believe that the sun revolves around the earth ( that’s how it ‘appears’ and that’s what many primitives believed and the Bible says), that there is nothing similar to atoms or electrons( they are not evident to senses)and that the flying of an airplane made of metal is impossible( that’s what many eminent scientists believed before the Wright brothers turned their wisdom upside down). Even specific sense , such as that possessed by experimental scientists suffers from the limitation that it operates within the six sense fields ( the five primary senses and the mind which is treated as a sense in Indian thought).
Meditation is experiential rather than experimental. Its an experience beyond the sense-fields rather than an experiment within them. All science is within the purview of the intellect while meditation begins after the intellect has been transcended. From the great infinite bliss of pure being, an emanation appears in the form of a cosmic music or great vibration of harmony. This is the great ‘AUM’ sphere. Causal, subtle and gross universes emerge from it, appear to be for a few billion apparent years and are finally dissolved in the primeval ‘AUM field of consciousness’ which itself merges into ‘ Infinite Bliss of Pure Being’ beyond all creation , vibration and emanation. This great AUM consciousness is the cause of light and sound spheres which grossify as the material universe in which individuated frequencies which are relatively less gross appear as sentient beings ( like human beings) while the frequencies which are relatively more gross appear as matter dubbed ‘non-living’ ( say rocks, soil etc.). It must be noted that in essence, matter is consciousness itself. The modern string theory and some features of sub-atomic quantum physics have some interesting things to say about the similarities between the most advanced science and mysticism ( read for instance, ‘ The Tao of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra, an eminent physicist , who also had a beautiful mystic experience; also the talks between J. Krishnamurti, a mystic and David Bohm, the physicist, which are available in book-form and also online and on youtube).
Lets expound this theory in detail.
1.) ‘ Infinite bliss of pure being’ is the great supreme purity of blessed consciousness which is the highest happiness and is beyond all appearances, attributes and individuation of any kind. It’s the true essense of everything that appears to have an individuated existence, from the entire universe to the sun to me and you and the chair on which you are sitting. ‘ The Infinite Bliss of Pure Being’ corresponds with ‘PARAMATMAN’ or the infinite bliss beyond the apparent individuated essence.
2.) The first and primary emanation which appears from the ‘INFINITE BLISS OF PURE BEING’ is the great AUM consciousness from which the great effulgence of pure consciousness appears. This is the effulgence which is experienced by yogis as the brightness of a million suns shining as one. Bliss and the greatest happiness which fills the innermost recesses of being is the primary attribute of this effulgence. The great cosmic symphony described as AUM or the word ( gospel of john/bible), logos( Greek mystics), Udgitha etc. is the ‘AUDIBLE LIFE STREAM’ which emanates from AUM along with the effulgence. This audible life stream too has bliss or the greatest happiness as its primary attribute.The AUM consciousness corresponds with the ATMAN or the apparent individuated essence.
3.) As the AUM consciousness with its sphere of effulgence and audible vibration involutes or descends a bit, the CAUSAL SPHERE ( Karana ) comes into manifestation which too has bliss , though now somewhat individuated as its primary attribute.This corresponds with the sheath or covering of ‘BLISS’( Anandamayi kosha).
4.) With further involution of the AUM consciousness, the SUBTLE SPHERE OF ENERGY( appears from the causal realm.Consciousness takes the gross form of energy. This corresponds with the sheaths of pure INTELLIGENCE( Buddhimayi kosha) and pure EMOTION( manomayi kosha).
5.) The involution of the sphere of energy into the GROSS SPHERE OF MATTER( jara) occurrs when energy is transformed into matter. Consciousness appears as apparently lifeless in the form of rocks, earth, fire, physical light, electricity etc..( Its extremely important to remember that the effulgence of AUM experienced in meditation is the light of consciousness with extreme bliss and pure consciousness as its attribute and hence is very different from the physical light, say of sun. Besides the effulgence of AUM doesn’t cast any shadow which physical light does.)
6.) As involution occurrs, the three spheres intercat with one-another and exist in tandem with one of them having prominence in its sphere of power rather than as isolated realms. Thus within the earth experience, the gross frequencies appear as the earth, soil, rocks etc. while the subtle frequencies appear as sentient beings ( birds, fishes, human etc.) and the more subtle frequencies appear as human beings.
Within human beings, there are marked differences as to whether the causal, subtle or gross sphere of consciousness is the most active. Besides there are differences between the spheres which are dominant in different states of consciousness. Thus, the gross sphere is prominent in ordinary wakeful existence of humans when information is received through sense-channels . The subtle sphere is active during dreams when consciousness becomes a bit free from sense fields( but not from impressions from sense-fields; dreams draw heavily from the experiences of wakeful existence; usually even in dream, the dreamer retains his ‘age’, ‘gender’ and ‘looks’; ability to dream as beings of a different and higher species is a sign of spirituality maturity) and creates its own ‘reality’ through dreams. The deepest dreamless sleep corresponds to the vacuum between subtle and causal realms. To wake up in the deepest dreamless sleep when the consciousness is free from gross and subtle spheres is the beginning of mysticism proper. Even an ordinary human being retains the impression of well-being and freshness after a night’s good sleep.

The Eternal Path

This is the flagship article of my blog, which I would keep at the top by updating it frequently. For somebody who hasn’t had a practical experience of mysticism, reading the other posts, without first going through this article, may not be of much use, or may even confound instead of enlightening. Here, I would expound in detail, the path of the anahata and its relation with mysticism per se. Every other post in this blog must be read in the light of this article, and whatever contravenes it, must be held as invalid, to the degree of contradicting it. This blog is primarily for those who consider mysticism as the central and defining facet of their lives and are prepared to sacrifice mundane concerns for a higher end, or atleast are willing to explore the higher things of life with an open mind.
That suffering is an unavoidable part of human life, as ordinarily lived, need not be expounded with varied examples. The human condition, with all its joys and comforts, is pitiable and lacking in any lasting succor. Buddhism describes six primary sufferings inherent in human existence- the suffering of birth ( which we have forgotten), the suffering of death (which we try not to remember), the suffering of diseases, physical and mental, the suffering of aging, the suffering of separation from the pleasant and the suffering of contact with the unpleasant. Usually the fertility of human existence adds many other sufferings to this primary list. Even if one is placed in comfortable circumstances, say born rich and handsome, with great political power and also wisdom and refined tastes, he cannot be more than a mere speck in the vast expanse of space and time which the universe is. Time and again, men of exceptional caliber have been born to decorate the annals of history, from Buddha to Ramakrishna and from Alexander to Genghis Khan; from Kalidasa to Goethe and from Aristotle to Einstein, they have all changed the landscape upon which they appeared ; but even such super-men were merely drops in the infinite ocean of time. A few milleniums pass and the giants of an age are forgotten along with the pettiest of their contemporaries. And even when alive, and inspite of their greatness, how insignificant the lives of such giants were ! They were born, interacted with the sense fields for a while, grew old in a moment and merged back into their constituent elements. Soon their ideas too vaporized into distorted forms, far from the origin. What was there that gave them any lasting happiness or peace?
There are two kinds of great men – those great in spirit and those great in mind. The great brains of every age, dominated with an iron will which seeks to bend the mighty nature to their own designs , are but puppets when compared to the giants of spirit. The armies of Alexander and Hitler couldn’t penetrate the hearts of men; these tyrants were forgotten after their ignominous ends. But Buddha still shines in the heart of the multitudes that live by His Dharma. While greatness of mind leads to no lasting happiness and is merely a function of greater potential to manipulate external nature and may even cause much distress, spiritual greatness is characterized by lasting peace and happiness and an aloofness from the external environment. Yet, even Buddhas and Krishnas are not the real heroes. They too are just ideas in the mental sphere after their gross bodies have perished. Before proceeding further, it is important to understand what sense-fields mean.
Indian psychology counts mind among the senses and hence talks of the six sense fields viz. the mental, visual,auditory,olfactory(smell), taste and tactile(touch). The sense fields are the spheres of the senses, their power-fields. Interaction of consciousness channelised through senses and the ‘external’environment gives rise to them. Among them, the mental sense field is the most subtle and hence most powerful. The other sense fields become coherent and pregnant with meaning only under the light of the mental field. Whatever has its being in the sphere of the sense fields is transient and of the nature of an appearance. The subject matter of sense fields is constantly in flux. Transience does not imply non-existence, yet it is also not pure existence because of its momentariness and quality of vapourizing into ‘the unknown beyond.’ Whatever is subject to time and space is transitory and hence contains no lasting happiness. Here, it is important to note that space and time form a whole and supplement each other. Time has no meaning except change in space and space has no being except as the playground of time. To talk of space independent of time is impossible. If there is no time, there is no movemant and no distance. Space has distance as the primary attribute. Whatever has the quality of distance which takes some time to be covered is of the nature of space. If there is no time, the concept of distance also vanishes and along with it, space is annihilated. Similarly, time cannot have being except through change in space. If space is absolutely static, time would vanish and by being static, space would lose its being as the plane of movement. Thus space-time is a whole and under deeper probe, a single entity.
Yet, physical space-time dimension has its being only in the causal sphere of consciousness. Here is the primary dichotomy between the insight of mystics and the theories of ‘natural’ sciences. Many theorists wrongly conclude that consciousness is a manifestation or attribute of matter, or that matter causes consciousness. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The probem arises because of the material bias in ‘scientific’ investigation. Natural sciences like physics and chemistry are based on empirical observation, which , necessarily occur in sense-fields, that is the spheres produced by the interaction of consciousness apparently individuated and sheathed in a gross body with ‘external’ sense-fields. Before human science comes the human experience and before human experience comes the human body-mind. Reality is not dependent on or a function of any species-typical framework, human or superhuman. The sphere of human experience is merely one among infinite individuated realms of consciousness, many of which are vastly superior to earth. Before going further, let us discuss a few delusions which are the subjects of much ‘scientific’ research.
1.) Humans are the most evolved and intelligent life-forms in our galaxy, if not the whole universe.
2.) Living things are systems that tend to respond to changes in their environment, and inside themselves, in such a way as to promote their own continuation.
3.)The primary determinants of human and animal behaviour are genetic endowments( heredity) and external environment.
4.)The purpose of an individual’s (human or animal) life is to pass along genetic material to the next generation of the species (the most dangerous and erroneous of all the ideas proposed).
5.) I think therefore I am (cogito ergo sum). -Descartes (the ambit of this statement is western philosophy rather than science).
Considering the first statement, "Humans are the most evolved and intelligent life-forms in our galaxy, if not the whole universe."
There is no evidence to prove that species more evolved and better endowed than humans in all respects do not or cannot exist. Humans are very primitive in their approach towards life. With limited mental and bodily faculties, they are using up earth’s resources as if they are the last generation to be alive. Besides, they have divided the earth into political entities that compete against each other and spend scarce resources to develop weapons intended to rid the earth of all species that exist on this space-time dimension. The methods which humans employ to check the suitability of other planets/spheres for life ( availability of water/oxygen/temperature congenial to humanoid species) are flawed because different life-forms appear in different space-time dimensions and respiration is required only on the gross sphere. What to say of other planets, superior life forms may exist even on earth in different space-time dimensions.Much of the visual and audible spectrum is beyond human cognition, yet very much exists. Similarly beings that exist in wavelengths of consciousness beyond the band of human consciousness would be beyond human cognition. The idea of gross universe exists because humans have a specific conscious vibration which synchronizes with gross frequencies. If a human seeker were to consciously tune into a subtler vibration, he would access subtler realms and beings right here. Breath is not a necessary condition even for human life. Yogis can consciously enter the breathless state when the body is charged by subtle vibrations of consciousness.In those states, the body remains without breath and with minimal heartbeat for hours altogether and actually gains health and energy. Indeed the physical means to check whether a yogi is in samadhi is to check his breath. A yogi in samadhi is not breathing. Only on re-entering the gross sphere does the breath come again (the physical breath links the subtle body to the gross body composed of flesh and bones). In samadhi,subtle consciousness recharges the gross body through spinal currents entering the body in medulla/brainstem.( Some scientists have done research on the special powers of yogis over functions considered involuntary , eg heartbeat; One such yogi, swami Rama, was studied intensively at the Meninger foundation in USA (Green,1972). Laboratory tests showed that, among other things, Rama was able to speed up and slow down his heart rate at will, to stop his heart from pumping blood for 17 seconds, to cause two areas of his palm a few inches apart to change temperatures in opposite directions until their temperatures differed by 10 degree AND TO PRODUCE WIDELY DIFFERENT BRAIN WAVE PATTERNS AT WILL/ Source- Abnormal psychology, tenth edition, sarason and Sarason).
Moving on to the next proposition, "Living things are systems that tend to respond to changes in their environment, and inside themselves, in such a way as to promote their own continuation", which is similar in essence to the fourth statement , "The purpose of an individual’s (human or animal) life is to pass along genetic material to the next generation of the species (the most dangerous and erroneous of all the ideas proposed)", this is again at variance with mystic insights which see the primary purpose of human and animal life as ‘transcendental’ rather than ‘existential’ or ‘species propagation.’ All forms of individuated existence are confining and illusory limitations upon the infinite bliss of pure being. Hence the primary mystic urge, which may lie dormant for a while but must necessarily sprout out when the soul awakens is to give up the sheath of individuality and merge in the ineffable infinite bliss. Propagation of species is the propogation of mistaken individuality and hence against the crux of mysticism. A species such as human beings cannot be attained except through gross and confining karma. Hence to be the trap for the confinement of a superior entity into the human cage cannot be desirable and to be the engine which uplifts a lower subtle being to the human plane is not rewarding as such beings bring gross samskaras (innate karmic tendencies) with them. This is the reason that celibacy is emphasized in mystic traditions. The primary purpose of life is to transcend all limitations and merge into infinite bliss of pure being. Propagation of species is only of limited significance and may be altogether sublimated for the much higher end of merger into spirit.
Moving on to “The primary determinants of human and animal behaviour are genetic endowments( heredity) and external environment.” Mysticism sees the body-mind experience as the gross projection of subtle tendencies accumulated over repeated interaction with gross planes and termed ‘samskaras’. Genes are merely the gross imprints of samskaras. Karma has a genetic repercussion or is filtered through genes to create behavioural tendencies and life-situations most suited to the fulfillment of past samskara driven momentum. Free will is always active. Besides meditation can burn as well as modify samskaras and genetic structure. Such genetic mutations are consciously induced and have merger into infinite bliss of pure being as the motive.
"I think therefore I am (cogito ergo sum)." This can easily be nullified. Absolute cessation of thoughts with complete retention of profound consciousness is the primary purpose of meditation. Hence though-process of any kind is not at all necessary for existence. Indeed thoughts are created when gross vibrations vitiate the purity of being. Supreme bliss is always beyonf the realm of thoughts or even subtle vibration. The elementary experience of deep dreamless sleep when neither thoughts nor the awareness of existence remain is common to all. Even in the deepest sleep, bliss and well-being is experienced. Its shadow is the feeling of being ‘refreshed’ on waking up from deep sleep. Slight awakening during sleep is also highly pleasant for the mind is in abeyance during sleep and the self is its native bliss, though not outwardly conscious of it.
These were just examples to show the difference between mystic insights and scientific findings. It can safely be deduced that mysticism is beyond the domain of the six sense fields and hence any study or reasoning, however precise, which appears in any of the sense fields. Later, I will expound the bridge between the sense-fields and spirit through which consciousness can expand into its native blessed state.
Spirit and matter have nothing in common for matter is a mere appearance while spirit alone exists. Matter appears to be while spirit is pure being beyond any appearance. Consciousness is not a form of energy. It’s the pure being in which energy appears as a gross vibration. I do not want to needlessly complicate things but oversimplification is also a mistake, especially because clarity is profoundly important before any real progress in mysticism can be made. Whatever I express as arcane theory has as its primary foundation, my own , first hand experience and not any faith, dogma or belief. Indeed I had rejected all religious and spiritual traditions and their varied proponents before mysticism exploded in me. On a similar note, I want the reader to reject my proposition or atleast approach it with the sharpest doubt and profoundest suspicion unless and until mysticism actually and irrevocably explodes in the innermost recess of his being. Intellectual knowledge without experience is not only futile, but downright dangerous, for it deludes the scholar into an illusion of knowing. It’s like a non-swimmer, who reads five volumes on the art of swimming and plunges into the depths of a raging river ! He would still stand a chance because the books would really have somehting to say about how to keep the body afloat in water. However spiritual books cannot even help that much because the domain of spirit is ineffable and all analogies are false and useless.
Now, theory is fine but what is the way out? If senses and mind cannot know the bliss of spirit , what can one do except squeeze what momentary happiness he can from human life? The answer is anahata – the perennial bridge between the sense fields and the infinite bliss of pure being. ‘Anahat Nada’ is the royal highway to the domain of the blessed spirit. When consiousness becomes profound and centred on an inner target, say unconditional love, or a deity or breath, an audible vibration is heard initially somewhat similar to the buzzing of bees or the sound that sometimes emanates from high tension electricity wires. In higher stages, the sound resembles a flute, harp, gong-bell and a roaring ocean. The highest sound is the symphony of all these five sounds (buzzing of bees, flute, harp, gong-bell and a roaring ocean) and is known as the ‘Aum’ vibration. Before proceeding further , I must clarify two things – what anahata is, and how far have I experienced it so as to speak about it with confidence. That I am speakning about it is due to two factors, viz. my own experience with it and the experience of more than a dozen seekers whom I have personally met and with whom I have probed the experience at length. I am only a humble beginner and have not proceeded far, but the signs have been reassuring and encouraging. This coupled with the testimony of those who have advanced much farther than me and have blessed me with their personal guidance gives me the courage to share with you, this blessed path, which when found, the climax of human existence is attained and the door to incredible bliss opened , which paves the way to final and eternal self-realization.
That blissful consciousness has the character of an audible vibration which reverberates inside the skull has been elucidated in all religions of the world. Modern western psychology too talks about brain waves or neural rhythms which vary with different degrees of arousal (eg alpha waves for relaxed wakeful awareness with closed eyes). Western psychology pinpoints only the brain wave rhythms for the three states of consciousness known to ordinary human beings viz. waking state, dreaming state and deep dreamless state. The fourth state of pure consciousness with no body consciousness is known to all mystic traditions with varied names like turiya and santori. It is this state where meditation proper begins with a specific audible vibration which corresponds to frequencies of consciousness other than those which create the warp and woof of the human experience. Western psychologists have tried to control supposedly involuntary mechanisms like brain waves upto a certain extent through biofeedback. However such techniques fail once the gross body is transcended and with it ends the domain of modern western psychology. The experiences after the gross body consciousness has been transcended fall in the domain of mysticism proper and have been elucidated in all traditions in different parts of the world.
What then is anahata? The Bible calls it 'the Word' that existed before the creation of universes and was the creative force for everything that came into the realm of manifestation. Indeed, the Gospel of John, in the new testament, identifies it with God. The Vedas and Upanishadas call it Om , nada, shabda, mukhya prana ( the chief vital energy) and udgitha ( sound from above). Sufis and Muslim mystics call it 'qalma' or 'bang-i-illahi' ( voice of God). Nanak calls it 'shabad' or 'satnam' ( the true name). Greek mystics call it 'logos'. Elsewhere, it is referred as 'the comforter' and 'the Tao'. The anahata means 'the unstruck' Nada means sound or 'audible vibration.' The literal meaning of 'anahata nada' is the unstruck vibration.' All physical sounds are prouced by striking two objects against each other. For example air strikes the vocal chords to produce speech and drums are beaten by hand. Different from all physical sounds is the unstruck melody of divinity which is acausal and not the result of any gross(physical), subtle(mental) or causal action. A phrase which would enlighten its meaning a bit is 'audible wave of consciousness.It is the bridge between individuated consciousness and 'pure bliss of being.' Practice of 'anahata nada', otherwise known as 'Surat shabda yoga' ( union of individuated consciousness and audible life stream ) and 'yoga of sound and light' begins when the meditator can clearly hear the inner sound current which appears as an audible vibration somewhat resembling buzzing bees, flute, harp, gong-bells and a roaring ocean in progressively expanding spheres of consciousness.

The Pilgrimage

Before I move on with the fable of my past, I must clarify that I do not consider these primitive and sensory experiences to be of much mystic use. What, then is the purpose of bringing them to the light of introspection open to anybody who bothers to read this blog? It is partly to walk on the steep road of truth, as I understand it and more importantly, to bridge the divine and the mundane. My journey from the abyss of psychological turmoil to the glimpses of the bliss of spiritual ecstasy needs to be told, for others would, and are treading on the same path. Maps are made when fellow travellers share and verify their signposts with the notes of other travellers. While my experiences of a tantrik nature may be irrelevant to a majority of seekers, they would at least, make them more aware of the vast and pathless land that truth is.
Soon after the intuitional explosion that the Goddess was a dominant archetype in my consciousness, I felt an almost irresistible desire to present myself at Her shrine and worship Her with deep devotion. However, I had considerable resistance towards such behaviour. Considering that the guiding force of my psyche till then had been agnosticism and empirically verifiable logic, I felt such a desire was regressive, primitive and parochial.But it soon overpowered me completely. I was merged in childlike joy . My mouth had that sweet flavour in it. And I longed for my cosmic mother. I felt my parents had done me a grave injustice by not taking me to the shrine of my birth. Now the only thing I wanted to do was to merge into the Goddess. The night this insight exploded in me, I felt extremely light in body and profoundly blessed in mind. It was a feeling of bodily pleasure and psychological joy. I didn’t sleep but roamed around due to an excess of joy. Towards the morning, I woke up Anil, my roommate and took him to the football lawns. He was shivering as I told him about the Goddess and how She was calling me. As he heard it, he was filled with delight. He said he would tell this to his mother. He felt the Goddess was giving me signals and I should visit Her soon. I lost my skepticism and decided to present myself at Her shrine in the term-end vacation a few weeks from then.
Then the pull became extraordinarily strong. She was pulling out the consciousness from my body. My body was very light and bathed with a bliss I had never experienced before. It was a day of December, 2005. I was in Seminar Hall-1, around nine in the morning. It was Panda’s class. As I was sitting there, in the top rung, I felt an expanding wave of ecstasy . My body seemed non-existent. Awareness was pure and light. I looked around at the class from the vantage point. It all seemed surreal.It seemed everything was pure consciousness without any individuation. As I looked at my batchmates and Panda, the Prof, I was amazed that they considered themselves physical bodies with limiting identities! I was full of compassion for them for having completely forgotten their true nature as pure consciousness and identifying with the confining dream of individuated existence. Panda with his fixed body language and Nikhil with his set responses, all looked like automatons, beings of delusions which were dreaming their absurd and painful dreams of individuation. And I myself was an illusion! Dreaming my individuation. I too had forgotten my pristine nature as eternal undivided consciousness. It was a profound experience rather than a verbal thought. However it was not true expansion of consciousness. Yet it was immensely powerful. I left the class and in the sun, I felt extreme exhiliration. Then with the power of an explosion, the insight that the whole existence had sprung forth from the cosmic orgasm of pure superconscious bliss which divided the original unity into the female unconscious and the male conscious burst in me. It too was not a thought but a burst of insight. I went to the mess and tried to eat something but hadn’t more than taken a bite of the sandwich when it seemed I was dying and my body was being dissolved. I rushed to my room and lied down on the bed for a while. Everything nearly vanished except consciousness. As I came back to the human plane, I was a completely different man. My sole concern in life was to go to Vaishno Devi and merge into the cosmic nature. Carrying only the Geeta and a book on Swami Vivekananda, I left the hostel with only Vaishno Devi in my mind.I took no clothes. It was like a great magnetic pull. It seemed my body was lifeless and was going to be merged in the Goddess. I don’t remember the station in Rajasthan for which I took the bus from Ahmedabad but most probably it was Abu Road. While on the bus, I felt immense lightness of body and was flooded with an expanded consciousness. All creatures, whether humans or birds, seemed mistakenly trapped in the nightmarish ideas of being mere lumps of flesh instead of the blessed purity of consciousness. As I saw people walking by the road, I was filled with extreme pity for them for living under a deep cosmic hypnotism and imagining themselves to be merely physical bodies with random thoughts. Consciousness alone existed yet everywhere deluded individuality seemed to abound. I was especially distressed at the sight of crows, pecking the ground and cried for them. It seemed they were souls in extreme agony due to the mistaken idea of being individuated as crows. There extreme agony seemed to cut through my heart and I cried for them.
Once in that town in Rajasthan, I took an ordinary ticket for Delhi. The bogey was full of all sorts of people and there was hardly any space. People were standing everywhere with no room for manoeuvre. I was sitting there, free from my usual identity and with hardly any thoughts. As the train stopped at a small station, an old Muslim man who was sitting at the window seat, became increasingly anxious and started pointing towards the floor on my side. People were leaving hurriedly and others were climbing into the compartment and there was hardly any room for movement. The Muslim asked me in a breathless tone for the bag in which he had his prayer-cloth on which he had to say his namaz exactly then. I asked all the people to stop immediately with great authority. They were startled and stopped for a moment. I pushed though the horde and grabbed the bag from under the bench and handed it over to the Muslim. He quickly spread it out , knelt down and said his prayers. I asked the people to move out which they did after a comment or two. The Muslim kissed the back of my hand and thanked me with deep emotion upon finishing his namaz. I was touched. Soon a wandering Hindu monk in saffron ( a sannyasin or parivrajak) came and sat by my side. He had a naughty smile on his lips and a remote, blessed look.He had taken some psychoactive substance which a few ascetics use. Yet, I was attracted by his aura and asked him why was I feeling such deep renunciation? I asked him if I should renounce the world. He smiled and said he wouldn’t say anything and that I should follow my heart. When I persisted he said, “ There is only one God. This is all I can tell you. I would go and sit elsewhere if you would ask anything else.” Soon he went to another seat. Later a young man who seemed suspiciously friendly to me sat by my side. My mind was too open to doubt anything, and there was no need for it either. This man started chatting with me and said he was a school teacher. He seemed very suspicious of the Muslim and deferential towards the Hindu sannyasin. I don’t know how but he started talking about the threat of Islam to the Hindu way of life. I told him it was best to be tolerant and to see the essesntial unity of all religions. I talked about the futility of fighting over religious beliefs. He said in an emotionally charged manner, “ Sometimes those of other religions create such provocative situations and hurt our innermost sentiments to such an extent that retaliation becomes inevitable and almost involuntary.” I wasn’t comfortable with his line of reasoning but his deep emotion suggested he had actually participated in some communal disturbance. Then he went on to say that in the world parliament of religions in Chicago, the organizers had kept the Bhagawad Geeta under all the other scriptures of the world religions. On seeing the apparent insult to Geeta, Vivekananda said, “ Hinduism is strong enough to bear the burden of all the religions of the world in its liberal philosophy.” I don’t know if anything of this sort really happened but it certainly showed his chain of thought. Probably he got a cue from the biography of Vivekananda I was carrying.
There was a young couple in the compartment. They started chatting with the old Muslim. The young man asked him where was he from and where was he headed. The Muslim said he was from Bombay and was going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Khwaja Muiniddin Chishti in Ajmer Sharif ( the blessed Ajmer) for he had been ‘called’ by the Khwaja. The young man replied with deep emotion, “ Khwaja ji ke bulave pe log na jaane kahaan-kahaan se khinche chale aate hain ( People come, as if pulled from diverse places, on being called by the Khwaja.) I myself want to visit the shrine from so long but the ‘call’ isn’t coming. You are blessed, baba, to receive it.” Their conversation touched me and I was filled with deep devotion for the Khwaja and Sufism. At Ajmer station, I almost felt like getting down and supplicating at the Dargah (shrine). I got down at Nizamuddin railway station in Delhi the next morning. I saw an emaciated poor boy lying on the platform, sleeping with his mouth open in which flies were entering with impunity. I felt deep compassion for him. I woke him up and asked if I could get food for him. He didn’t reply. I asked him to stay there for a while and bought something for him to eat. But he was not there when I came back. I asked a man standing nearby if he knew where had he gone but he said he didn’t. I bought ‘The complete works of Khalil Gibran’ from the station book-stall. As I was walking to the nearby bus-stand, I saw a young Buddhist monk in red robes and felt an attraction towards him. I approached him and asked if we could talk. He didn’t understand either Hindi or English but held me by my wrist with enthusiasm and took me to a shopkeeper nearby. He said something to the shopkeeper in Bengali who addressed me in Hindi and said he could act as the interpreter. I asked the monk through him that I wanted to renounce the world and become a monk like him for I had severe dispassion and was dead to all this world had to offer. I asked him to initiate me into monkhood there and then. He replied, “ But I belong to a Bangaladeshi order.” I said, “ There is no nationality of one who has renounced every worldly tie.” Both, he and the shopkeeper started laughing at that and the shopkeeper said I was speaknig from a different plane. I left them and took the bus to my hometown in Punjab (Malout). Next day, I left for Vaishno Devi from Malout, accompanied with my father, who insisted on doing so due to what seemed like my strange behaviour to him. I asked him to let me go alone but he said he feared I would never return if I went alone. I had never been to Vaishno Devi before. Indeed I had left visiting religious places many years ago. Now , however, I felt my entire soul was being pulled towards the shrine. As we reached Katra, the base for the holy trek to the ‘Darbar’ or court of the Goddess, I was thrilled at the sight of the mountain with a path woven with lights. After depositing the luggage, we sat doen for a while in a rest-room. There I had a great weeping-spell. I wept like a child and all negativity seemed to flow through the tears of remorse. I kept on weeping loudly for quite some time. As I composed myself, I was feeling light and fresh. We began the trek late in the evening. My father hired a mule but I insisted on walking. It was a deeply emotional journey. I was brought up in the mountains and the sight of the Himalayas always gave me peace and a feeling of being at home( now, I have transcended this attcahment). But this was quite different. It seemed those hills were intimately related to my past. I felt my love for the mountains was only because of those hills and that throughout my life, the only desire which I had but which had lied dormant or taken multifarious forms was to present my sel fat thst shrine. The more I ascended, the lighter I felt and it seemed my entire being was infused with a great energy. I was growing in will power and determination. However, another thing which was a constant presence was a childlike devotion for the Goddess. She seemed like everything to me- my mother, friend, sister, beloved, enemy, an intimate friend and an enemy at once, in short absolutely everything. Now, twenty- two years after my biological birth, I had come to her shrine for the first time. However I deeply felt that I had always been with Her, that I had lived in Her astral realm before being born as a human being! I didn’t even know the legend behind the shrine the pilgrimage spots within it till then. It was there that I learnt the legend of the young ascetic girl, whom Bhairav, the star-disciple of the tantrik Gorakhnath, tried to molest. The girl fled from her tormenter and hid in the cave called ‘garbh-joon’ ( birth through womb) for nine months to meditate deeply. When Bhairav located her there, she fled to the peak where the court of the Goddess is now located. Bhairav chased her to the peak. On reaching the peak, the girl took the awesome form of the Goddess and beheaded Bhairav with one powerful stroke which made his head fly away to a point two kilometres away , where the temple of Bhairav is now located. Bhairava’s soul begged for the Goddess’ forgiveness before leaving the mortal coil. In Her infinite grace, the Goddess forgave Bhairav and granted him final salvation or moksha, the aim of human existence. Thus, Bhairav was triumphant even in his death. This , of course looks like an incredible fable. However, it is the symbology which is important. ‘Bhairav’ is symbolic of the ‘mumuksha’ or the aspirant who seeks moksha or final liberation from the cycle of individuation and de-individuation of consciousness( birth and death). The girl, who later becomes the Goddess, is the cosmic hypnotic delusion (Universal Nature) or Maya which gives an appearance of reality to the dream of human existence. Bhairava’s trying to molest the girl is symbolic of the seeker’s developing yogic insight ( that which unifies the individuated with the infinite is yogic) which makes him violate the profound hypnotism of maya. The girl’s fleeing to the cave of womb for nine months is symbolic of the evolution of Maya to increasingly subtle dimensions as meditation progresses ( The waking existence is gross while meditational realms are very subtle). Further the nine month period is symbolic of ritual rebirth of the sadhaka through meditation. The discovery of the girl in the womb by Bhairava after nine months is symbolic of the experience of the causal nature by the yogi. The girl’s flight to the peak and taking the form of the Great Goddess is the revelation of nature’s infinite power and majesty. Bhairava’s being beheaded by the Goddess is symbolic of the extinction of individuated existence of the yogi in the deepest samadhi ( In samadhi bliss remains but the enjoyer is transcended) when the cosmic hypnotic delusion liberates him from Her shackles by terminating his individuated existence. The forgiveness and moksha which she grants to Bhairava is what he always wanted . The forgiveness is due to the crime of transgressing maya before the dissolution of karma in its due course by the faster route of yoga or tantra ( thus transgressing Her hypnotic virginity or ‘molesting’ Her). Moksha is what Bhairava aspired for and for it, he adopted the faster route by violating the laws of nature. Thus he dissolved his being into ‘infinite bliss of pure being’ or blessed consciousness beyond the confines of nature .. After liberating him, the Goddess merged into Her three constituent qualities of Sattva ( bliss and harmony;Saraswati), rajas( passion and activity;Lakshmi) and Tamas ( illusion and divine mystery;Kali). These qualities are worshipped in the form of the three ‘pindas’ or holy rocks of different hues in the shrine proper.
Of course, I didn’t know about this symbology at that time, but my emotional experience was profound. I felt, on the one hand, immesely guilty and full of sin, and on the other, being blessed with divine forgiveness and motherly grace. As I ascended towards the shrine, I gradually became free from the guilt and moral weight I had been carrying for ages. One thing which struck me was the pervasive presence of paramilitary forces with checkposts after every hundred metres. It was due to the shrine reportedly being on the hit-list of terrorists. however it seemed unnatural to me. If the Goddess Herself needed to be protected, why was I supplicating before Her? Besides, how dare they frisk me when I was there to meet my mother? My father told me about ‘Ardha-Kumari’ on the way where the narrow cave of ‘Garbh-joon’ ( realm of womb) was located. He asked me not to enter the narrow cave as it frightened some people and besides the queue for the entry-slips was too long and time consuming. I had heard about the narrow cave for the first time and it struck me deeply. From later childhood, I used to repeatedly fantasize about a narrow cave through which I had to crawl. I insisted on going through that cave.When I passed through that narrow cave, I was flooded with an ecstasy and a strange sense of vigour and power. Along with it, words came out of my mouth spontaneously. I asked the Goddess to give me back my sadhana (spiritual practice) of all the previous births, which She had kept in Her safe custody. This was a spontaneous outpouring as I would have never consciously thought demanding anything from any deity, least of all such a seemingly surreal and fantastic thing. Upon coming out of the cave, I was lost in bliss and vigour for hours. In the morning, I went through the cave again and witnessed a very strange incident. A woman and a group of people were carrying a young wild looking girl, with a foaming mouth ,shrieking wildly and making the most painful sounds and trying to break free of them with all her strength. The woman, who seemed to be her mother, was begging forgiveness from the Goddess and praying fervently. When passing through the cave, she asked all the devotees to hail the Goddess. At their collectively hailing the Goddess, the girl, already in pain, seemed to be in hellish agony and made the most heart-rending cries as if she was being tortured to death. The more the Goddess was hailed, the more her increasingly violent and painful body-movements and shouts increased. She had to be restrained by the group which was carrying her to prevent from breaking free and nearly ran away once. However, with great effort, they were able to put her into the cave. By the time she came out of the cave, she was relaxed and without any sign of abnormal behaviour or psychological distress. After a while, I saw her sitting peacefully with her mother with a calm, relaxed expression. I won’t further dwell on this incident which may have entirely psychological causes or may be a combination of psycholgical and as yet unknown factors. However it did show the reason the majority of people visit religious shrines; to redress their worldly problems rather than to seek final bliss of salvation. Indeed, worldly desires vitiate the atmosphere there and make pilgrim spots unappealing to mystics who turn inside the temple of their own bodies. Whatever caused the girl’s abnormal behaviour, faith seemed to have healed it quickly enough.
Early in the morning, I began the final leg of my pilgrimage, the ascent to the court of the Goddess. The three-fold aspects of the Great Goddess as Saraswati ( Sattva or Bliss), Lakshmi ( Rajas or Passion) and Kali ( Tamas or Mystery) increasingly attracted me and I asked Her for ecstasy, vigour and final salvation through Her manifestations.

Summons From The Goddess

As I probed my psyche with Darshan, I felt an increasing attraction towards Durga, the Mother Goddess, which soon took the form of an obsession. My mind embarked on a voyage of its own and logic became the tool of a specific chain of thought. I reasoned that I had been brought up In Solan, a town associated with Durga, and had a devotional heart in my childhood. Till the age of fourteen, I was devoted to God .On attaining the age of 14, two decisive changes confronted my impressionable mind- I had to leave my then beloved town, Solan when my family shifted to Punjab, and I fell deeply in one-sided love with Priyanka, the newcomer in class ninth. Both had profound effect on my consequent years, and were deeply inter-related. My love for Priyanka wouldn’t have become an obsession, and wouldn’t probably have been retained for so long and with such deep passion, had it not been for the physical distance which separated me from her, and let me create a mental image of her, which was at variance with her mundane reality. The thing which struck me was that I became an agnostic and started doubting the existence of God just after I fell deeply in love with Priyanka. I reasoned that I had transported the devotion that I earlier felt for an abstract deity to a girl when sexuality awakened in me. This had been facilitated by the physical distance that separated me from her for the next seven years and the almost zero interaction which I had had with her. The other theory that exploded in me was a bit more intriguing. It had to do with striking a balance between the male and female dimensions of my psyche. I reasoned that in Solan, the feminine archetype has a strong presence. The feminine is associated with the unconscious or the natural while the masculine is the conscious and the artificial or manmade. The mountains are natural, hence feminine. Besides Himachal is dotted with shrines glorifying the Goddess. Solan ( Shoolini/Durga), Shimla ( Shyamala/Kali), Chandigarh( close to my hometown, though not in Himachal/ Chandi), Mansa devi and many others. Crowning them all is Vasihno devi, the shrine of my ritualistic birth through the mannat in which my parents had asked the Goddess to give them a son, whom they had promised to bring back to Her soon after birth. This was a promise which they had never fulfilled while I had attained the age of 22. I further reasoned that my psychological distress had started on migrating to Punjab. I theorized that Punjab has strong masculine cultural vibrations with the female aspects grossly sidelined. Considering that it is the state with one of the worst sex-ratios in India and no natural landscape (tilled fields with excessive spray of insecticides are anything but natural) and a patriarchial dominant religion ( Sikhism with ten male Gurus and monotheism with no worship of the absolute in feminine terms) and a long history of political turmoil and general violence ( masculine activities), the feminine dimension of my psyche was suppressed. I also felt that Himachal was the domain of the Goddess while Punjab was the territory of the masculine Sikh gurus. ( It must be appreciated that this chain of thoughts is relevant only to understand my state of mind and has no meaning otherwise and is inherently flawed for being divisive and reductionist, if not outright incorrect. Sikhism mentions the God as being both the father and the mother and Punjab has a very sizeable Hindu population.) I felt the feminine dimension of my psyche, personified as the Goddess was punishing me for leaving her domain of influence ( Himachal) and stopping her worship upon migrating to Punjab through the masochistic thought-pattern that so disturbed me and yet seemed insurmountable.In Himachal I had worshipped God in male idiom ( Shiva or a male saint) and had seen Solan as my mother, thus balancing my internal gender energies. This balance was broken in Punjab where I was already in the presence of a strong male cultural sphere but was unable to give the female energy any outlet. This I thought had resulted in masochistic fantasies. However, it must be noted that masochistic fantasies were present in me from early childhood when I was very much in Solan. Freud was right when he talked about childhood sexuality because I clearly remember erection at an age close to five when a group of girls from my primary class were dominating a boy in a recess game.I was capable of sexual arousal through normal fantasies but masochism was, and has remained till date, the dominant theme in my sex-related imagination. However physical pain or vulgarity of any kind always disgusted me. The thing that aroused me was the idea of a beautiful woman whom I loved so much as to be her devoted slave and who was ultimately benevolent to me as a deity though initially testing my devotion.What struck me in those days of introspection was the remarkable similarity between my thought-pattern and the rituals of Goddess worship in the Indian Shakta tradition. Before probing the train of thought further, I must clarify the difference between Shakta tradition and masochism and pinpoint my exact position. The Shakta school of Indian mysticism sees the primodial Devi or Shakti, as the supreme conscious bliss of pure being, complete in Herself and without and absolutely independent of any male consort. It can be said that in Shakta tradition, it is the devotee who provides the male element( presuming that he is male) and doesn’t delegate it to any divinity. Male consorts play a role in vaishnava/shaiva theology where the goddess appears as the active energy of her inert consort ( eg Parvati for Shiva, Lakshmi for Vishnu and so on). The views of Shakta and Vaishnava/Shaiva traditions are irreconcilable in the position given to Devi. The Devi is supreme is Shakta tradition and it is with this school that I am concerned. In the Shakta tradition, the aim of the devotee is to worship the Goddess and be a recipient of Her benevolent grace before ultimately merging into Her infinite bliss of pure being. Though usually devotees look towards the Goddess as their Cosmic or Personal Mother, the relation of a devotee and the Goddess is by no means limited to any particular idiom. Any relation with the Goddess can be conceived. She can be seen as supreme bliss or infinite consciousness in purely abstract terms or as a beloved, friend, teacher, majestic empress, sister or any other relation which suits the individual temperament of the devotee. Depending upon the psychospiritual stage of development of the devotee, the relation can also be negative in idiom, for example an enemy of the Goddess whom she conquers or a slave whom She controls utterly. Even if the devotee visualizes himself as the slave of the Goddess, she would still be benevolent and merciful to him in the end and guarantee his spiritual salvation through her benevolent grace. However, in the initial, lower stages, She can be cruel and wrathful to destroy his ego and other gross afflicitions. Its similar to a mother punishing her young child to improve his character or a female teacher chastising her male pupil to make him learn. As the lower stage is transcended, the relation takes positive idiom of love and grace until ultimately, all strands of relation are transcended and infinite bliss beyond manifestation as Goddess- devotee attained. Masochism, deriving its name from Leopold Masoch, who authored ‘ Venus In Furs’ about being enslaved and humiliated by a beautiful woman was earlier classified as a paraphilia but is now considered normal though atypical. Its relation with tantra is that of a glowworm and the sun at best and dust and effulgence at worst. vulgarized masochism has nothing to do with tantra. In its refined form, it has minor similarity with lower-end beginning tantrik rituals. Yet in essence, the two differ widely. Masochism may have more in common with ‘yoginis’ , specifically referring to evil female nymphomaniacal spirits who deter and obstruct sadhakas. It is thus highly dangerous, probably much more than normal sexual desire which has a gross evolutionary purpose to serve.
Here I am giving an example where a masochistic theme is used in a lower-end tantrik ritual.
"Another type of stri puja, or a preparatory phase for it, has been mentioned by Benjamin Walker. Here the man to be initiated has to play the part of a domestic servant in a woman's household, slowly progressing toward an intimate relationship with her.
At first he sleeps in the same room with her, but on the floor, while she sleeps on the bed. After two weeks he joins her in bed, but at her feet; then beside her, but clothed. Then he lies beside her nude, fondling and caressing her. Then he has intercourse with her, but without emission. Benjamin Walker. Tantrism. page 51
This ritual technique for building up erotic tension has been used as the plot for a beautifully written story, Moonjewel, by William Kotzwinkle. http://www.yoniversum.nl/yoni/stripuja.html (source)."
On further probe, the other thing which struck me was my unease at being a Sikh in a Hindu majority state. I was always psychologically a Hindu, but having worn the visible external symbol of Sikhism ( unshorn hair) till the age of fourteen ( when I had my hair cut, superficially to make myself attractive to Priyanka, but primarily to free myself from the identity-badge of Sikhism and to integrate myself to the wider canvas of Hinduism) I was subjected to taunting and both overt and covert discrimination by my classmates and at times, even by teachers. The devastating effect which it had on my psyche is significant because a very deep-rooted desire in me was to become acceptable to the Hindu society, which I thought I could do, only as a Hindu. The lenghts to which I went for this were considerable ( for e.g. even supporting extremist Hindu ideology and referring to the teaching about Sikh gurus in ‘History of Punjab’ class as discrimnatory towards Hindus as they shouldn’t be forced to read about the gurus of another religion!) . It could be said that my reaction to being discriminated against for my visible Sikh identity as a child was to cling to Hinduism the moment I shed it. My feelings in this direction were so deep that at times I feel I subconsciously wanted to fall in love with and marry a Hindu girl to become more of a Hindu.
In this light , my obsession with Priyanka and burning desire to marry her inspite of her having no emotions for me can be described as an attempt to integrate psychological loose-ends from my childhood. Priyanka, to me was always the angel who manifested as the newcomer in ninth . To win her affections seemed the ultimate prize. My heart had been sealed at the age of thirteen and I never felt any emotional attachment to any other girl save Priyanka. Looking from minority/majority perspective, it is significant that she is a Brahmana, ritually, the highest caste of Hinduism. She seemed to me, then, as the prize of Solan, the town I grew up in, and even her lack of affection for me made her all the more attractive for being an unachieved trophy. This of course was subconscious and not something that I admitted to myself or overtly knew. However because of my deeply introspective nature, it was never too far from the surface. Yet, even if valid, it was true only on the mundane sphere and my passionate love for Priyanka was much more than mere caste-gymnastics.
As I became aware of this apsect of my thought-pattern, I discussed it at length with Mathew, the cultural studies faculty at MICA. I also told my father about my neurotic attachment towards Hinduism and even an antipathy for Sikhism. He told me he himself found Hinduism deeper at mystic level but had never felt any antipathy towards Sikhism. That was the point when my mother told me that she had dreamt of a temple of the Goddess from which the Goddess Herself emerged and handed her an infant a few days before my birth. This came as a revelation to me and affected me deeply. In itself it was a minor detail{ my mother had dreamt of a gurudwara( sikh temple) and Guru Nanak a few days before she gave birth to my younger brother ; a professor related her dreams with cultural psycholgy and the archetype of maternity}. However the way the pieces joined together to make the picture was remarkable. This, then were the links.

1.) My parents took a mannat from Vaishno Devi before my birth.
2.) My mother dreamt that the Goddess herself handed over an infant to her a few days before my birth.
3.) My mother has shown psychic abilities in other instances. For example she saw my father’s face before meeting him and came to know of her mother’s death and my father’s serious accident beforehand through intuition.
4.) I was born with deep devotion towards a feminine figure of awesome majesty which was corrupted into slight masochism. This I related with a punishment for not worshipping Durga and my parents’ not fulfilling the mannat by taking me to the shrine after birth.

To this, I added Priyanka. In Indian devotional religion, there is a practice known as ‘nyasa’. It refers to descension of divinity in a mundane object for a while for the purpose of worship. After the worship is complete, the divine consciousness leaves the mundane object. . I felt I had performed a nyasa on Priyanka – that she was the idol through which I was always worshipping Durga! My extreme devotion to her, but without any carnal desire, indeed an inability to think about her in carnal terms and belief in her as the source of infinite love and joy all indicate that I was looking for the great Goddess in a mere girl who had all the frailties of an ordinary human being. This was also supported by -
1.) My talking about the unfulfilled mannat to Vaishno Devi to Priyanka, she being the only person with whom I discussed it.
2.) My becoming religious again on meeting her after seven years. ( The divinity was expanding from her source-body.)
3.) My deep desire to starve myself to death in the Shoolini ( Durga) temple in Solan when I couldn’t contact Priyanka for many weeks.
4.) My dream in which Priyanka was Ganga, the personification of spiritual purity (inspite of her being just a beautiful girl with normal shortcomings).
5.)I told Priyanka that I remembered her instead of God whenever I had any trouble. I told her she was the God whom I worshipped. To this , she protested she was too human. ( To love somebody and not to see God in her is to taste but the brim of the cup. The beloved is God and love is the origin of God.) I messaged her that I would find God for her. She gave me back my mysticism, just as she had taken it from me.
If the great Goddess can be worshipped in a stone idol, she can much more be seen in a human idol through nyasa, especially when there is impenetrable physical distance between the woman and the devotee ( as was the case with me for seven years). ). As I found out while studying Indian Cultural history ,( A Cultural History Of India, edited by AL Basham) later, this concept was specifically used by and theorized upon by Bengali tantriks. Chandidas, the fourteenth century Bengali devotee, is the first great name in Bengali bhakti literature. He held that the only way to salvation is the love of God, and that this love must be based on an earthly passion for a particular person. This passion, however needs to be sublimated, and therefore the beloved should be an inaccessible woman, for instance, a married woman, or even better, a woman who doesn’t respond to the devotions of the seeker. This failure to find a response on the gross plane would soon sublimate the love to divine plane. Besides it’s the foundation of the metamorphosis of worldly love ( Ishq-i-zamini) to spiritual love (ishq-i-haqiqi) in sufism. Consider that Rumi , the doyen of mystics, considered Majnun the greatest of all mystics. He said it was divine rapture which made Majnun kiss the dog of Laila, his earthly beloved.
It shouldn't be assumed that I went through all this convoluted mental logic through some effort. It was more like bursts of insight. What had seemed hazy yesterday seemed clear like sunlight today.Now as these thoughts sunk into me, I felt an immensely powerful pull from Durga. Every cell in my body felt the great Goddess of the shrine of Vaishno Devi was calling me. It seemed She would pluck out my soul from my body. I had to go and merge into my Goddess. I tried resisting but all effort was futile.

The Dilemma

After many earth- days, Nishabda came down to gross sphere. His spirit re-entered his gross body and his breathing started again. His heart started beating again. He was lost in immense bliss that opened pores in his skull for hours before he gradually became aware of his physical body. He rubbed the soles of his feet for a while and then looked around. Night was falling when he swam back to the shore. He was still sitting on the shore as the sun rose in the east. He was lost in contemplation, though not connected to the primal wave of consciousness, when Anahata came, a picture of youth on his white horse, Shvetank, the eater of wind. Anahata softly patted Nishabda on his shoulder. He shook him slightly on not getting any response. Nishabda looked at his friend with a slight smile. “Why have you come to disturb an ascetic with your worldly filth?”
“This is no time for jokes. I am in mortal danger. None but you can save me.” Anahata had a perplexed expression on his young face.
“So, you have picked up a fight with your own guru and want me to intervene? What has it to do with me? What are the delusions of life and death to a yogi? Whether the body breathes or mingles into dust, its all the same to me. Fight a good fight before you die. That’s what you Kshatriyas are fooled into believing when they teach you their so called dharma. Why isn’t your mind at peace if the battle is righteous?” Nishabda was still smiling as he chided his visitor.
“So, you already know everything. Then you must help me out of this quandary. I cannot fight him for he is dearer than life itself, nor do I have any hope of winning. You must convince him that I mean him no ill-will and don’t want to fight him.” Anahata was trembling as he spoke.
“The child doesn’t leave the womb to re-enter it, nor does the apple again touch the tree from where it has fallen down. The karma that you have set in motion must be fulfilled. The fight is sure to happen. Neither I nor you can stop what has already happened and is just being replayed on the earth sphere. To live, you must kill him. Whoever challenges you to a mortal combat is an enemy, and death is the only homage that an enemy deserves.”
“He is my revered preceptor, dearer than life itself. And I don’t have even an iota of a chance to stand against him. You must intervene to stop this senseless combat.” The brave Anahata was in tears.
“Tell me the whole thing. Not that I don’t know it, but your words would better reflect your perspective.”
“ It all began on that moonlit night, when I was strolling by the side of the river.”

Nishabda

Nishabda looked at the vast expanse of the roaring ocean. His beautiful eyes shone like twin suns, illuminating the universes through their brilliance. The prince was alone on the shore. A distant island of the color of emerald beckoned him. He swam across the shark-infested waters with effortless grace. He found a cave in the island and sat down for his meditation. He knew it won’t be his final merger into cosmic spirit. He had the imprints of karma which would weave waking dreams for a few more earth days. As he sat, firm in his posture, his consciousness rose like a current, up from the sole of his feet, towards the crown of his skull. An expanding, audible current of consciousness engulfed his body and gradually started a spiral, ascending motion, benumbing his feet, calves, thighs and abdominal region. Effulgence appeared when his body had gone numb till the navel. The rising consciousness gave him raptures of incredible bliss in the skull and the effulgence became prominent. Gradually, his entire body went numb till his eyebrows. All his consciousness became centered in the skull. His heartbeat and breath stopped and the mouth of God opened in his medulla. Cosmic consciousness supported his physical body through waves of energy that charged his backbone. He had broken the barrier of breath. Breath had been plucked out of his gross body. He became dead to his body and awake to the great effulgence, the white light that blazed like thousand suns. With the sound of a giant thunder, cosmic consciousness met his individuated being at the point where all the nerves of his brain met, and he left his body, though still connected to it with a silver chord of light. The subtle body of Nishabda traveled through increasingly blessed realms of light and sound, of ineffable beauty and joy. Transcending the last subtle sphere, his subtle body was dissolved and the causal sheath engulfed him. Supreme bliss of being merged him into Her ever-new joy.

Bliss Of Pure Being

The aim of anahata nada meditation is to free consciousness from the bodily cage and progress to increasingly expanding spheres of consciousness until spirit finds its primeval identity as infinite bliss beyond creation. The premise from which this meditational practice springs forth is that consciousness has a wave like character and can be perceived as an audible vibration, reverberating in the skull ( specifically at the point between and slightly above the middle of the two eyebrows) and leading to effulgence. In the Koran, Muhammad experienced a reverberating bell-like vibration before Gabriel revealed the law of God to him. All Indian mystic texts ask the seeker to meditate on Om, which they equate with God. Meditation is not a bodily, intellectual or egoistic endeavour. Rather, meditation begins after the confining walls of body, intellect and ego are transcended.

The female reveals the male.

Ever wondered why that xx/xy chromosome creates this dividing wall of gender? The subtle sphere of fertility creates two distinct frameworks for the individuation of consciousness. The opposite reveals its opposite. The male cannot know himself without exploring the female. Nor can the female see herself except through the mirror of the male. Primal consciousness is ever-free of attributes and has no gender or sex. However the visarga which divides everything with its fangs of duality creates the eternal division of sexes.. The female is the mirror through which the male can know himself better and vice versa. You cannot see your own face except through a reflection. You need the other to know what you look like! Indeed when there is no other, there is no I either. Freud talked about the infantile desire to make love to the parent of the opposite sex and consequent jealousy towards the same sex parent. He named it ‘Oedipus complex’ in boys and ‘Electra complex’ in girls. Many have derided him as a mere weaver of fables but some of his theories sprang from deep insight, though limited and only into baser human instincts. Even the Tibetan book of living and dying ( Somgyal Rinpoche) talks about the individuated soul’s ( or ideational body since Buddhism doesn’t talk of a soul per se) longing for the parent of the opposite sex and jealousy for that of same before entering the zygote and determining its sex. Jung went a step further through his archetypes of anima and animus but failed miserably when he blatantly misinterpreted the biblical ‘logos’ or ‘word’ as the male logical faculty. It was the worst misinterpretation of Bible. The logos is the primordial vibration of pure consciousness from which all that exists springs forth.
To return to our topic, pure consciousness is vast, infinite and neither one nor many or fractional. Infinite are the attributes that appear in its sphere of conscious joy without ever having any being. Pure bliss appears to touch myriads of opposites to explore its endless majesty. It is female to know the male,night to know the day, ugliness to know beauty and humble to know the mighty. Yet they are all only momentary appearances. It is what it always was and shall ever be- beyond time and space. Infinite joy of ever-new being.

What then is anahata?

The Bible calls it 'the Word' that existed before the creation of universes and was the creative force for everything that came into the realm of manifestation. Indeed, the Gospel of John, in the new testament, identifies it with God. The Vedas and Upanishadas call it Om , nada, shabda, mukhya prana ( the chief vital energy) and udgitha ( sound from above). Sufis and Muslim mystics call it 'qalma' or 'bang-i-illahi' ( voice of God). Nanak calls it 'shabad' or 'satnam' ( the true name). Greek mystics call it 'logos'. Elsewhere, it is referred as 'the comforter' and 'the Tao'. The anahata means 'the unstruck' Nada means sound or 'audible vibration.' The literal meaning of 'anahata nada' is the unstruck vibration.' All physical sounds are prouced by striking two objects against each other. For example air strikes the vocal chords to produce speech and drums are beaten by hand. Different from all physical sounds is the unstruck melody of divinity which is acausal and not the result of any gross(physical), subtle(mental) or causal action. A phrase which would enlighten its meaning a bit is 'audible wave of consciousness.It is the bridge between individuated consciousness and 'pure bliss of being.' Practice of 'anahata nada', otherwise known as 'Surat shabda yoga' ( union of individuated consciousness and audible life stream ) and 'yoga of sound and light' begins when the meditator can clearly hear the inner sound current which appears as an audible vibration somewhat resembling buzzing bees, flute, harp, gong-bells and a roaring ocean in progressively expanding spheres of consciousness.

Individuation Of Consciousness

Think of this moment, a moment of waking existence with arbitrary sensory stimuli and random thoughts. Think of the entity that experiences and is beyond what it experiences. Who am I - shorn of chance accretions like name, gender, occupation, race and socio-economic standing? If I am a product of my experiences, it naturaly follows I am a constant flux. But doesn't something pervade this flow of events. The first question is what made me take on individuated existence in a particular moment and at a particular place in the vastness of eternity? Had I been born c. 643 bc in Egypt, I could have been a pharaoh but as it happened I opened my eyes in the 'democratic' chaos of India in 1983. Was it arbitrary? Why wasn't I born a female or say an alien. Why wasn't I an American or say a Bantu? Why wasn't I born in a distant galaxy or in a different universe? Why wasn't i born as a galaxy or as the whole universe rather than a peck of biology on the infinite astronomy? I could have been the whole universe instead of a mere man. And I could have been infinite consciousness rather than merely an individuated sentient being.But the primary question is why at all was it necessary for me to be at all? Existence could have done without me and I could have surely done without existence. I could have done without myself and without ' the other' in relation to which I exist.It seems I was flung into this chaos without any desire on my part. Suppose you open your eyes one fine morning and find yourself a being of bliss with beautiful ideas floating amidst you. Could you have chosen that state of existence? And what about being born as a lump of bones and flesh with a particular band of sensory stimuli to befuddle your nascent mind and to finally program it into constructing a particular cognitive framework and giving it the label of " reality". My reality is surely not your reality nor is the reality of a President the reality of a labourer. And reality changes every moment. But does the knower change with the known? One problem is that analogical thinking is a mental trap and using dissimilar objects or events to explain something is flawed. When somebody says Samadhi is like a river merging into an ocean nothing is known because neither water nor flow has anything to do with expansion of human consciousness. But is the phrase " expansion of human consciousness" any better. Unfortunately not because consciousness isn't a word. Indeed nothing is a word and every word is a mere metaphor for something entire different, nay a label, even less potent than a metaphor which derives from supposed resemblance. The first thing required is liberation from internal language. By internal language I mean verbal thoughts. To say something is beautiful is not to experience beauty for that which can be experienced can never be decsribed but merely indicated. Language is fine so far the experiences described have some bearing to the common stock of human memory or when the mind is equipped to comprehend the experience but a fatal error when that which happens on the cessation of mind or atleast the cessation of individuated mind is to be described. Indeed its a fatal error to describe it at all. And that's what I am going to commit in the hope that the error may inspire a genuine enquiry for the truth that caused it.

Shower Of Bliss

Awareness existed but I was nowhere. Pure consciousness had risen with all delusions swept away. I had this beatific experience two years back. It all began in 2004. I was then in Chandigarh and madly in love. Once while reclining in a coach, I suddenly felt a surge of ineffable, almost unbearable bliss rising up my body and a delicious feeling flooded my being. Consciousness was subtle and profound and beautiful. I felt like God. I thought it was love.Spiritual ecstasy is impossible to elucidate. Those who experience it know it. It is the profoundest consciousness of the highest bliss, the greatest happiness that exists, the supreme flowering of being. It begins with loss of body consciousness and expansion of consciousness beyond, way beyond the trap of individuality.

The Dream Of Passion

Humans search for the elusive entity beyond the mundane concrete reality. To exist and not to transcend reality is to die by slowly merging into an endless void. The seed must be buried if the flower is to bloom even if spring has too short a run. But only the infinite can sate the human soul and it requires the sacrifice of individuality, the final illusion that binds consciousness in the mortal coil. To love is to lose the binding ego and have a glimpse of the vastness of eternity where neither right nor wrong exist and meaning is transcended as a mental construct. Mere physical attraction can pave the way for a deeply transcedental experience which is beyond the ordinary. This is my story - incomplete, fragmented but authentic.When I first had a glimpse of it, I was in a bus and it was night. A current of bliss seemed to rise through my body and consciousness became unbearably soft and delicious. Existence was a thin layer beyond which an ocean of bliss beckoned. The doors were opening. But it was some time before I realised it. As a child I was afraid of dying. I remember lying on the bed awake at night, aged hardly six, thinking of my impending death or that of my father. I was in perfect health but had become conscious of my mortality and death seemed profoundly disconcerting. I asked my father how real death was and if there was an escape. Thus began my journey into myself, the journey to find that which transcends mortality, that which lies beyond gross physical existence.

Cosmic Beloved - I

I feel great resistance as I write this. Should I discuss such deeply personal experiences on a public platform? Wouldn’t they confound instead of enlightening? Have I myself gained anything from my experiences? However a long period of lying has created a sense of guilt in me. Now I want to come out with the truth- for the sake of the few who would care for it- even if it is absurd or deeply disturbing.
As I was undergoing preliminary sessions with Shah, I told him about the deep hold the feminine had on my psyche. I had masochistic fantasies about a dominant woman who had complete authority over me from a very young age. Suddenly a flash of insight exploded in my mind. It was more like a primordial craving. Was the worship of the mother goddess an answer to my suppressed fantasies? I had always dreamt of a beautiful ( at times divine, at times vulgar)woman, whom I wanted to worship, before whom I wanted to prostrate. Wasn’t worshipping Durga the antidote to my fantasies? At that time, I was still an agnostic. I wanted to worship Durga only to fulfill my masochistic fantasies. I felt part of my neurosis may have had to do with suppression of the masochistic dimension of my personality. I also discussed it with RK, the consumer behavior faculty. He told me the feminine has been part of every religious tradition, whether in overt or covert forms. There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source... We talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt we have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere. While Hinduism is the only major religion wherein the mother goddess is worshipped on such a large scale (Her presence is specially marked in Bengal and Himachal), she is present even in Abrahamic religions. She is the Virgin Mary in Christianity and Fatima in Islam. Besides her suppression in mainstream Islam is more than made up by Sufism where she is the eternal beloved for whom the mystic yearns. Rumi considered Majnun the greatest of all mystics. Kabalistic Judaism too has strong associations with the feminine divine. I formulated a rough hypothesis for my condition.

Sutras

In the song without words, I Am That.

Reality is as imagined as imagination is real.

Humility is the first lesson. Love is the last.

Every co-incidence is divine incidence.

A friend is the one who takes you one step further in sadhana ( spiritual practice).

See the Great in the tiny, not the tiny in the Great.

I am constrained by existence.

My body has no language.

Tangibility, reliability, consciousness, kindness and equity are the five guides.

Nothing is a vice for the truly wise.

In Her Praise

Most revered, most benevolent, awe- inspiring, source of creation, origin of beauty, lap of love, giver of wisdom, most patient, capricious, most terrible, fear-provoking, mysterious mother goddess.I lie supine in front of thee and pray, kiss thine feet and pray, love thee and pray.My Goddess,Thou are the seed of creation, the mysterious, the unknown, the unmanifest, the vast, benign and terrible at whims and unknown, unknowable in your divine essence, giver of wisdom, courage and vitality, ever-patient, ever-enduring, picture of forgiveness.Thou gave birth and ruleth in the initial epochs but the conscious fragments of existence have created a turmoil in your vast mystery and thou has benevolently let them do that. But your pain has been great and if more is inflicted, thou will rise and in your wrath annihilate humanity. I am your child, mother goddess. Take me in your benevolent lap and let me sleep or do whatever you want from me. Be benevolent and take me in your eternal lap of divine love.Nature is the unbridled, the vast, the unconscious, the unexpressable, the ineffable, the everlasting and to express thee in words in futile but verse, beauty and grace suit thee more than prose, ugliness and wrath. In you are manifest the extremes. Thou are benevolent or cruel or benevolently cruel, benevolent if submitted to and cruel if risen against. The mother goddess, ever present in nature as extreme, unbridled, everlasting, supreme energy is all-encompassing and sustainer complete in Herself

Words From Trance

We are all constrained by existence. Some learn to love their shackles and take for reality what is an illusion. Just as awakening is a natural suppressed impulse in sleep, so is the final awakening a natural impulse in the existential dream. The dreams of gods make the reality of humans.In the beginning of things, there was but one, neither sleeping nor dreaming or awakened, nor in a stupor, neither beautiful nor ugly nor of common looks, neither water, nor air, ether, earth or fire, neither element nor compound, atom or molecule or quark, neither male nor female nor sexless. Unawakened ordinary human existence is nought but the dream of sleeping forces. Geete is true and so is the granth, Koran and bible though suited to different climes, races and dispositions. Destiny and nature create the stupor and everything becomes hazy.What a divine game ! What a divine game!When the female and the male originated, the female became the origin and male the course, female became the seed and male the plant, female became the cloud and male the rain, female became the energy and male the manifestation of that energy. Female became the unconscious and male the conscious.

Roar Of The Goddess

Shakta Tantra, the worship of the divine in feminine idiom, is deeply embedded in India. The Mother Goddess is worshipped in various manifestations, some of them saumya ( soft or benevolent) like Saraswati ( goddess of learning and speech; esoterically anahata nada or inner vibration of consciousness) and Lakshmi ( goddess of harmony, health and prosperity; esoterically- spiritual bliss); and other ugra ( wrathful) like Durga ( the inaccessible; primordial infinite unmanifest), Kali ( the black one, symbolic of all-devouring time and death; esoterically- the sublimation of ego necessary for absorption into infinite bliss of pure being ) and Chandi (goddess of war; symbol of destruction of evil- esoterically, the sublimation of gross/ material consciousness).
The Goddess has always dominated my consciousness. Who knows which soul would she make her throne? Ineffable are Her ways, infinite Her manifestations. I am the first of the two children of my parents and was born two and a half years after their marriage. My parents had gone to Vaishno Devi, a shrine of the Mother Goddess where the benevolent and the wrathful synchronize, to take a mannat ( asking for a boon with the promise of doing a devotional act after it is fulfilled) for the birth of a son. They had promised to bring the son granted by the Goddess back to Her shrine soon after birth. Shortly before my birth, my mother dreamt that she was in a shrine of the Goddess. The Goddess materialized from the idol and bestowed a child into Her arms. I was born on shastama ashwin navratri, the sixth of the nine nights in autumn dedicated to the worship of the Mother Goddess. I spent the first fourteen days of my life in Solan, a town that derives its name from Shoolini (the spear- holder), another name for Durga. The Goddess pervades the mountains of my childhood. Shimla is named after Shyamala, another name for Kali, Solan after Shoolini, Kalka after Kali and Chandigarh after Chandi. Chandimandir and Mansa devi are important shrines dedicated to the Goddess close to Solan. Besides Himachal is dotted with Jwalaji (Goddess of flames), Chintpurni ( soother of worries), Chamunda Devi and Naina Devi ( the eyes of the Goddess), all famous shrines where She is revered. Kurukshetra, which is close, has a Shaktipeeth, the seat of the Power, where the esoteric foot of Parvati is worshipped. And crowning them all is Vaishno Devi, the shrine of my birth. Ironically, I have visited Vaishno devi only once, and that too twenty two years after my birth.
During the preliminary sessions ( they never went beyond preliminaries) with Darshan Shah, the psychodynamic psychotherapist in Ahmedabad that I introduced in another post, I soon delved on the unique relation I have had with the feminine element in my psyche.

Bumpy Road

Soon after the US Pizza, I and Anil decided to visit Rajneesh Krishna (RK), the Consumer Behavior faculty at MICA. I still felt I had some psychiatric disorder but its symptoms had become too complex for any inference to be made. The loss of individuality at US Pizza didn’t gel in with anything I had read or known. I told RK about my low mood and tried to relate it to my unrequited love for Priyanka. I don’t know why I mentioned Priyanka to him although she hadn’t figured in prominently in my thoughts which had an existential flavor. He showed interest in my thought-pattern and asked me not to regard it as pathological in nature. He told me about his experience in IIT-B when he had lost his father. In those days, he was mortally scared of crows and used to be afraid that a crow would come and bite him. When somebody told him about the strong association of crows with death in Indian culture (crows are associated with ancestral spirits and shraddhas (ceremonial month when ancestral spirits are offered funeral oblations) in Hinduism) and related his fear of crows with his refusal to accept the death of his father, he was cured of the fear. He felt I was depressed due to pent- up emotions which needed to be unveiled. He asked me to come again when Shubra Gaur, the Organizational behavior faculty would also be there. Gaur talked to me from a psychodynamic perspective and tried to gather information about my childhood and intimate relations. All that came through in that conversation was my neurotic obsession with the mountains where I had grown up and my pain at Priyanka’s rejection of my deep love for her. Gaur asked me to acknowledge fully that Priyanka never loved me. I told her I had accepted that the relation had ended. She said, “A relation has to exist to end. The truth that you must acknowledge is that you never had a relation with her.” This hurt like hell. It hurt because it was true. I had loved her and her alone yet we had no relation. Priyanka herself told me the same thing in almost the same words a few weeks later. Shubra told me I didn’t show any symptoms of bipolar or biological depression which even otherwise, couldn’t be confirmed without a bio-chemical analysis of brain. She asked me to consult a psychodynamic psychotherapist whom she knew. She also asked me if I would like to see PAT ( Professor Atul Tandon), the director of MICA. I was ok with it. I met PAT along with Gaur, RK and Anil. He asked me if I wanted to talk to him in private. He asked about the cause of my low mood and the strategy I had adopted to cope with it. Again I related it to my unrequited love for Priyanka. Priyanka had become a scapegoat for my archetypical fossils of id.
The doctor Gaur had recommended was Darshan Shah. Young and understanding, he was the best of this breed I have come across. I told him about my fear of going insane. He said it was unfounded and asked me not to leave the hostel for home but to continue the therapy with him. As a psychodynamic psychotherapist, his approach was, of course, radically different from the neuropsychiatrists I had consulted earlier. We discussed my past. I told him about my experiences at US Pizza and Desai’s clinic I also told him about a teenage incident when I had spoken to my father as some supernatural entity who had ‘occupied’ my biological body. He showed interest in it and asked me to describe the incident. It had happened in 1998 when I was studying in tenth standard. One night, I had told my father in chaste Hindi ( we always use Punjabi at home) that I was not his son but a yogabhrishta ( a fallen yogi/ spiritual seeker) who had entered the body of his son to fulfill his carnal desires. Besides I had asserted my superiority over him as an experienced yogi who was a master of the occult and the mystical with the ability to enter into the bodies of others. My father asked me if I remembered what I had told him in the night the next morning and I replied in the negative though my memory of the conversation was perfect. I had lied to avoid awkward questions for I had no idea why had I talked in that manner with him. I asked Shah if it was a psychotic episode. He said it wasn’t a psychotic episode. . He said psychotic episodes are characterized by amnesia which was clearly not the case with me. He felt it may have been disassociation. However, still the fact that I remembered it well was crucial. As I attended more of his sessions, I told him about my neurotic attachment with the mountains which he related to gigantic archetypes in my unconscious. he felt the peace I felt in the mountains or around an ocean was due to the physical reflection of my internal mountains of archetypes which such landscapes offered. He further felt I was unable to express aggression or hostility and its suppression was creating a knot in my mind. I found this insight relevant to my life-experiences.
Then I told him about my masochistic fantasies. Masochism is a term derived from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch who authored ‘Venus In Furs’ in which he talked about being enslaved and humiliated by a woman. Some people relate physical violence along with vulgar and disgusting things with masochism. My fantasies were concerned with having to submit before an all-powerful female divinity who was endowed with awesome majesty and power. I had these fantasies form a very young age- at least from the age of five.

Purity Of Being

Towards the end of 2005, I had a profound experience. After the fit of incoherence at Desai’s clinic, I was apprehensive about staying in hostel and wanted the comfort of home. I told this to Anil, my roommate. He asked me to give him a treat before I left (he really loved his food!). We went to US Pizza, an eating point, one evening. I had come there for the sake of Anil and had no appetite myself.
As I was sitting there, I felt my consciousness rising as a powerful current up my body towards my skull. I felt immense lightness of being. Gradually my individual identity melted away. I was aware of profound peace and pure being- a lightness which was soothing and immensely relaxing – but there was no sense of individuated identity. It’s impossible to put it in words. Being was but I was nowhere. Consciousness was but there was nobody who was conscious. Awareness existed free of time, space, sex, age or any other encumbrance. It was profoundly peaceful. I was free from ‘myself’ – from my clutter of life-experiences, hopes and fears, thoughts and the usual psychological process. The body was extraordinarily light, almost non-existent and the mind was in abeyance. There was no sense of a self distinct from the environment and no ego. However awareness was profound. And freedom was immense. It was the defining moment of my life.

Beating The Retreat

My psychic forces had given up the patrol. The cannon had exploded in the castle of the primeval unconscious. ‘Beating the retreat’ ceremony was in progress. The battleground of the body was in internal turmoil. The gods of absurdity were howling. Forces of material consciousness were putting on their last defense. The call of the day was ‘back to the barracks’ after a final showdown.
A few days after Diwali, I went back to Desai, the previous doctor. I told him about my experience after taking the pill he had prescribed and the other doctor’s advice to change the diagnosis. He talked something about labels being meaningless and new psychiatric wisdom talking about a broad spectrum of mood disorders ranging from cyclothymia to bipolar. He said the only thing that mattered was coping with it and living a seemingly normal life. I was apprehensive about becoming a pill-dependent zombie but he felt it was the only way out.
“Whenever you feel low, call it depression and gulp a pill. When you feel high, call it mania and gulp a pill. When you feel normal, call it boring and gulp a pill. Three hurrahs for the pill!!!” As I was sitting and listening to his idiotic nonsense, I had a strange experience. How should I put it? I lost control over myself. My mind went blank for a while and then words came spontaneously and with conviction, “My problem has nothing to do with psychology. The thing is that I am absolutely alone in this vast world. I don’t have a single soul to truly call my own – not a single soul.” The ejaculation was accompanied by a strange state – I felt an alien in my body- and my consciousness seemed to have transcended the barrier of temporal identity. To put it simply, I was aware, but not of my usual identity. I was just aware of ‘being’ contaminated with a flavor of absurdity. I tried to speak but nothing came out of my lips. When I came back to myself a bit, I wanted to leave the clinic. The good doctor said, “You forgot the payment part.” I paid him quickly and left.
The experience was more than disconcerting. I was filled with a strange terror as I walked around on the highway. Had I lost my sense of coherence? Had I gone mad? I shuddered at contemplating life as a lunatic. I imagined myself roaming around aimlessly – living on scraps from some garbage-pit, alienated from my family, alienated form humanity, worse than an animal. I had forgotten myself for a while in that clinic! I had gone through blues earlier but had never lost my grip on ‘reality.’
I was apprehensive of another fit of incoherence and decided home was the only safe place in case of a remission. I feared I had some psychiatric disorder and was afraid of social stigma in the hostel. I felt against traveling alone in that state of mind. A family friend had been posted as a Colonel in Gandhinagar cantonment till a hew months back from then. He arranged for a JCO to accompany me on my journey back home. I had told about my condition to Anil, my roommate. I was in a very relaxed state, having admitted myself as somebody in the need of help. I watched light movies and enjoyed surrendering myself to the perceived infirmity. Some General visited the cantonment and the leave of the JCO was postponed for some days. Anil suggested that I talk to somebody from the faculty about my state of mind. We zeroed in on Rajneesh Krishna, the Consumer Behavior faculty.

The Last Defence

The intellect had one last weapon in its arsenal and it used it the moment its reserves were finished. A part of me told me I was suffering from something close to clinical depression. I was missing lectures big time and a component of the grades were supposedly attached to them (you could never be sure of anything in MICA). I googled ‘Ahmedabad Psychiatrist’ and went to the first doctor that I found listed on the net. He was a neuro-psychiatrist, aloof in his detached professional attitude and lacking in basic humanity though glib in theorizing about the need of an understanding friend. He asked me to take pills for depression. I said I wanted to cope without them- through exercise or some breathing technique. He asked me to try such methods which he was sure were bound to fail and to come back to him when I realized my complete impotence before the goddamned pill. I tried to cope on my own by seeking the help of Anil, my roommate, to wake me up before the classes and by exercising physically. However I kept on missing lectures. I went to the doc again. He had a complacent smile as he prescribed me the pills.
It was in November 2005, during my second term at MICA. He told me he would be off for Diwali for the next few days.
I took the pills, expecting some minor relief. How badly I had miscalculated. A few hours after taking the pill, I was transported to pure heaven. I felt my entire body had evaporated. It was ineffably blessed and pleasant beyond measure. I lay in bliss for close to twenty hours. I thought I had been reborn and lost all memories of the past. When I took the next dose, I became recipient to awesome beauty everywhere around me. The campus seemed full of angels and gorgeous nymphs. Every face gleamed with heavenly beauty and joy. That night, the batch had arranged a terrace party for Garima Chugh who was soon to add Pai to her name. As I tried to ascend the stairs, I felt I had no body – it was all air. I felt I would fall down or fly away. I clung to the rods when I climbed the makeshift ladder to the roof. On the roof, I was lost in bliss. I wanted to wish Garima happiness but had no control over my arm’s movement. I couldn’t shake hands with her because I couldn’t locate her hand with mine! I dangled my arm and she shook it. In the party, as Roerick and Kanishk danced, I was transported to great joy. There dance and everything seemed surreal and ineffably beautiful. That night, I decided to discontinue those pills. I hadn’t taken more than three and they had nearly transported me out of this world. I discussed it with Anil and Mukul. The doc was away on Diwali vacations so I called another renowned psychiatrist through the reference of a friend. I told him the great bliss I felt and the name of the pills I had taken. He told me the pills were just normal antidepressants but according to him, I was misdiagnosed as suffering from depression when I had Bipolar- II. He asked if I had felt similar bliss earlier. I replied I had felt heavenly bliss for months in Chandigarh when Priyanka was responding to my decade long love for her for the first time. He said it was hypomania and I should get my diagnosis and medicine changed to suit Bipolar-II.

The Siege Of Palash

My mental forces were in retreat everywhere. The intellect was fighting a losing battle. Dispassion was triumphant in every engagement. However, there was a third player, the cunning ‘ally’ of dispassion- absurdity. As I grew more and more detached from waking existence and fell into the swoon of archetypical dreams, joy came in my sleep. I forgot myself and the world and was least bothered about studies marketing trash for waking dream delusions miscalled humans. I was more awake in my sleep than when my eyes were open. The only thing which interested me when awake was Mathew movies and his classes – and they had only one theme – the absurdity of the human condition. Racism, Genocide, Gender issues, the humanitarian crisis in Africa where humans were being butchered for being born into a particular race, the hidden racist messages in advertisement and mainstream cinema, Nazi inspired holocaust ( which had horrified me even earlier) – it seemed human existence was worse than futile- it was positively evil and filthy as urine. The vacuum created by retreat of the instinct of self-preservation on the bodily plane was filled by absurdity. It was in MICA that I became acutely aware of my identity as a Jat. I experienced a deep-seated archetypical Jat in a vision- a crude, simpleton, living in a primitive age- I was shocked and disgusted at this component of my identity. Soon I was disgusted with human existence in general and then any form of fragmented existence. I wanted either absolute and irreversible extinction or infinite inviolable pure existence free from any constraint – bodily, intellectual or egoistical.
The triumph of dispassion was sullied by absurdity. And the absurdity came in the form of racial and parochial consciousness. This absurdity was to play a pivotal role in the impending crisis of consciousness.

Rage! Rage! - Against The Body

It was rage against being just human – a mass of bones and flesh with random thoughts, some beautiful, rest mundane and ugly. What was I doing in that alien body? Why was existence fragmented? Why wasn’t I the entire universe rather than a mere lump of bones and flesh? What were money and political power, sex and love worth when my too mortal flesh was destined to crumble in dust? I was tormented by the fear of old-age and a meaningless existence lading to it- more than death. It became an obsession with me. What was my true nature? As I exhausted my brain by extreme and sustained probing, it grew still. I couldn’t bear waking existence – most of all I couldn’t bear human flesh. I grew disgusted when it struck me that I was encaged in a mortal cage full of feces, urine, phlegm and impending old-age. Soon my disgust spread to all human bodies. I couldn’t bear the site of human bodies. I felt I must transcend this mortal cage. I felt it from deep within. I felt I was the entire universe rather than just a mortal lump of flesh. I felt my being the universe was the reality and the bodily cage a nightmarish dream that I must wake up from.
I had contemplated suicide and zeroed in on two possible methods- drowning or pistol. However in spite of the deepest probe, I couldn’t assure myself that extinction of the biological process would necessarily lead to termination of consciousness. I tried very hard intellectually to assure myself that physical death would terminate psychological suffering. Finally my intellect admitted complete defeat and ceased bothering me. My mind ceased asking questions for no answers were forthcoming.
I went to classes without registering anything. My mind was in a near blank state. It registered nothing. However I was interested in Mathew movies and his classes. Mathew, the cultural studies/film studies faculty at MICA is one of the best teachers I have come across for he provoked the intellect by taking it out of its depth.

Dissolution of Individuality - I

“As I was sitting on the chair, I felt a strong current of consciousness rising upwards in my body. It was a physiological sensation; a profound wave was rising up my body. As it rose up towards my skull, I felt immense peace and unbelievable lightness. My body was ‘dissolved’. It was so light as if it didn’t exist at all. It was the first time I had experienced something of this sort. Initially I tried to prevent it from happening but I was myself ‘dissolved’. As I sat there, I lost all sense of distinction between myself and the surroundings. The consciousness which separates the individual from the surroundings was ‘dissolved.’ To make myself clear, awareness was there and profound but there was nobody who was aware. Consciousness existed but there was nobody who was conscious.”

This happened in December 2005, in my second term at MICA. It was the culmination of a long-drawn internal quest for the essence of life. During ragging, I had felt the need for something to grasp and had tried to imagine a divine friend like Buddha or Krishna who is internally present and constantly guides me. It was a method used in Bhakti (Indian devotional religion) and also a psychological exercise for coping with stress. However it had no lasting effect on me as it seemed too fabricated.
On the night of the freshers’ party, I got drunk for the first time in my life. I had touched liquor 6-7 times earlier but had never really got drunk. On that day, I drunk till I lost all shame and sense of physical balance. When inebriated, I started wandering seemingly aimlessly. But there was a method in my madness. I picked up all the seniors who had ragged me and pushed them around or in general got on their nerves. I asked Asad to recite Ghalib when he was dancing with his girl and pushed Jai around. Soon I started talking about God. As I recounted and Anshul told me later, I was talking about God being everywhere and being of the nature of pure, unconditional love. I was saying that God is in the glass, in whisky, in the bricks and everywhere else. The other thing I did was to sms Priyanka that I loved her and her alone and would marry her. She had told me about her boyfriend a few days back and had rejected my love. I had intended never to call her again though I had professed my love to her regardless of her lack of any emotion for me. That day, liquor broke my resolve and I messaged her about my love. Due to some fault in my cell, it was SMSed more than twenty times. I have recounted this incident only to highlight my deep-rooted desires. As it was the first time I had got drunk, the natural result was loss of all inhibitions and uncovering of my unconscious impulses. Three desires had manifested when I was drunk- the desire to retaliate against the seniors who had ragged me, which was time-specific, the desire to profess my love to Priyanka which was an unresolved knot and the desire to feel the immanent presence of God.
Soon I started falling into an ‘existential depression.’ Rather than thinking about my studies (which nobody thought about at MICA anyways except a few weird nuts!), I embarked upon a deep search for the essence of life, for something that gave life meaning and could never be violated by the caprice of time. Unfortunately the means I adopted for such a profound search were less than insufficient. They were absolutely useless and misplaced. I tried to ask my parents and teachers besides surfing the internet endlessly. I was already well-read on Indian mysticism and western psychology. Now I read whatever I could on practical forms of mysticism as taught my modern Gurus besides alternative views like communism, nihilism, drug-induced hedonism and even occult theories- usually western. They all filled me with disgust. Nobody seemed to know anything about the most important of all entities- human life and the best way to live it. All Gurus of past and present seemed either posers or deluded. Nothing satisfied me. Nothing could have because I was reading them while everything mystic is experienced. However since I had a solid empirical approach at that time, I thought all mystical experiences were within the ambit of psychology and had neurological causes. The internet had much against mysticism in the form of rationalist criticism and whatever was in its favor looked fanciful and the product of hallucinations. In a few weeks, I had exhausted my brain by stuffing it with theoretical philosophy, religions-western and eastern, mystics- traditional and maverick, psychologists- neurological and psychodynamic and lunatics- morose and insightful. I was absolutely fed up and dead-tired. I stopped searching on the intellectual plane.
My existential melancholy was not however casual. I was genuinely and deeply in search of meaning in human existence because life as I was living it seemed futile and worse, a curse that was imposed upon me. I thought it was my individual viewpoint but as I read about gifted thinkers ranging from Buddha to Tolstoy, they all agreed that human life, as ordinarily lived, is a vale of absurd sorrow.

The Rite Of Initiation

All specific communities have distinct initiation rites – difficult and seemingly pointless. The purpose is always to raise the investment in being a member of that group and hence to refrain the novice from quitting.“I suffered so much to get here. How can I quit now?” This is the formulaic thought that must be produced in the novice if the initiatory rites have been successful. Like all academic hostels, MICA had a tradition of ragging (which I hear was broken in 2006). Besides initiation into the cult and ‘breaking the ice’, and even more important than them is mass sadism. Those placed in the senior batch can let go of their suppressed sadism on the hapless juniors. Somebody kicked their ass when they were neophytes. And they want to pass on the pain.Dress codes, assignments, porn- plays, engineer’s (or should I say truck driver’s) song- PGP ragging had all the ingredients. Those were also the days when the sky kissed the earth through monsoon rains. We kept on bearing, rebelling from, getting bored with and ignoring the ragging and the rain depending on our proclivities and whims. I had only one expectation from ragging which couldn’t be fulfilled. I wanted to be ragged by a beautiful senior girl. But that was not to be. The senior batch had hardly one reasonably beautiful damsel and she never ragged me (or anybody else as far as I remember). I never did those weird assignments and was individually ragged by a stupid senior whose voice was womanish and behavior clumsy. However the ragging did have its effect of making MICA unbearable.It ended in a week or so. On the last night, entire PGP-1 was transformed into transvestites with the men wearing lipsticks and dupattas. It reached its nadir and then dunking and friendly hugs signaled the end of the absurdity.

The Class

From Anil, the sleeping Tantrik masquerading as the cynical Telugu to Shiti, the ambitious lover of Ash pics unsure of the path God had chosen for her ; from Roerick, the lone Aryan to Shayan, the dreamer; from the understated Anshul to the exuberant Shagun- all became the variegated hues of the kaleidoscope that was PGPCM-07. These fallen angels were the chosen few that were stifled out of the herds of confused applicants, many of whom filled MICA as an afterthought, unsure of where it stood in the spectrum of institutes projected as the quickest route to mammon and fame.Palash and Kacchnar, two of the eight hostels named after evergreen flower bearing trees, became the cells of these IMC monks for the first year of their initiation into the intricacies of sophisticated faffing. Palash was the cave for the denizens of Mars and Kacchnar the nest of damsels from Venus. It began with 77 students- 40 from the fairer sex. A girl who was a married model left soon after ragging; Arvind and LS Rohit left in the first term. I was the seal of the backsliders- the last to quit. Nobody left the hallowed lands after me. My time came towards the end of third trimester.

Genesis

I can think of MICA in numerous ways - as a dream of psychedelic mysticism, a playground of deep-rooted archetypes, a collage of anceint memories, a drama of absurdity; in short everything except an institute of Integrated Marketing Communications. I don't feel much emotions now but her enigma remains. To write about her is not however an act of catharsis. Whatever I describe here is true to the best of my subjective knowledge, distorted by time and robbed of many naive illusions. Opinions expressed here are entirely my own and may not agree with other times, other perceptions.The first thing that arrested my attention in Ahmedabad on that rainy day of June 2005 were a couple of Muslim boys with skull-caps running around jovially. I was pleased at the contrast between their innocent faces and the image of riot-torn Gujarat that had lingered in my mind.I reached MICA more dead than alive. But there was a rhythmic beauty in my gloom. Nine days ago, the woman I wanted to spend my life with had told me about her boyfriend. However my dispassion had much deeper roots. Ever since I entered adolescence, aloofness with a touch of proud sorrow had been my constant companion. However currents of great joy kept the ship sailing.

Ashish Pandey's Testimonial

Since he didn't accept it on orkut, here it is :-

Of course, he is selectively well read and genrally well behaved. That doesn't mean he can't be vicious. Though he keeps it within limts, the limits can be pretty all encompassing. The 'khaanabadosh' from Hindi heartland is a testimony to the joy of depression and the passion of mania. He can sleep well and wake up pretty tired even after hibernation. Wears traditional kurta-pyjama on republic day and looks like the brand ambassador of swadeshi. History is in his blood, and it's bloody history which he likes. Had he been in the India of early 1900s , he would have destroyed the moderation of the moderates. Had he been a Britisher in the India of 1930s, he would have created another Bhagat Singh to assassinate him. Unfortunately, his time came in the democratic chaos of 1980s and he buried himself in books when he learnt to distinguish the alphabet from ants on paper. He once wanted to join the IAS. The UPSC asked him to swear by the constitution. He said he would make a new constitution and make them swear by it . Well, the last incident may not have really happened but does indicate what happens when the vision exceeds the limits of the body. Then Pandey ji sleeps and sleeps. And dreams. And makes the life of those who are on his work-group a little more interesting and a little less pleasant. Laugh at him and he would laugh back at you. Cry and you would have his sneer to accompany you. Now that I have got even, let me say he is intelligent, artistic and good company for a nice long walk with plenty of discussion. Let him know what he really wants and he would excel in it. Let him knock the doors of intuition and they would eb opened for him. Let him build on a dream and it would be transformed into smiling reality. He is the quintessential lost idealist who would lose nothing by working on his idealism and letting the constraints of reality mould it into a shape more suited to the waking-dream. Walk with confidence and stand with strength. Use the darkness to make the light more visible. And make the light your own.

Mystic Institute Of Consciousness And Absurdity

What can I stay about an institute where I had the blessed vision of Lord Krishna, where my roommate told me about a previous incarnation when we were fellow-initiates of a mystic order in the upper Himalayas? Where I had visions of angels and ascetics of awesome majesty? Where I thought myself to be the most powerful man in India for a while. Where I enjoyed the choicest of women and the heights of glory. Where I suffered from deep delusions and bizarre fears. Where I hallucinated about a genocide. If I was hallucinating, I would trade millions of mundane human lives for a night of such hallucinations. The Mica I know is "Mystic Institute Of Consciousness and Absurdity". Others know it as 'Mudra Institute Of Communications, Ahmedabad.'

Anahata

Anahata nada is the infinite ocean of consciousness
of which human consciousness is a minor wave
in psychology dey talk of brain waves
brain waves are electrical in nature with low charge
consciousness too has wave-like character
expansion of consciousness is the purpose of all genuine religions
to get in touch with anahata nada
means to begin the journey of expansion of consciousness
when concentration becomes intense on an inner target
say breath
or an inner mantram
or love
or sometimes due to other reasons
an inner sound is perceived
like the buzzing of bees,
like high tension electric wires
or at advanced stages
like flute, gong-bell, cymbals
and roar of ocean
that is OM
ANAHATA NADA
anahata means unstruck
i.e. a sound not produced by any physical means
nada means 'audible vibration'
some call it AUDIBLE LIFE STREAM
ven its heard
heard and concentrated upon
it creates tingling sensation in the skull and at the point
between d eyebrows
the sensation soon creates pores
and great pleasure
gr8r than sex, drugs or anything in d wrld
: know that pleasure and all the joys of d world vud look like beggars bowls:
dispassion alone is d weapon
it can happen even vidout meditation/mantra/pranayama
ven a certain amount of dispassion is achieved
anahata manifests its d beginning of yoga
anahata is big and profound and is for strong people
vat do u think made kabir and ramakrishna what dey wer?
what makes mystics what dey r?
remember how we felt ven we were 12-13 and suddenly discovered sex
initialy we doubted ven sb told us about sex
now its commonplace
similarly anahata happens at a particular stage of soul's evolution
for a while imagine urself to be an embryo in a womb
d embryo thinks d womb is d whole universe
but ven d time is ripeit leaves d womb and enters what we call the world
we human beings are like unripe embryos
and this earth with sky covering it is d womb
anahata liberates us from this womb
itz d culmination of human existence
dose who fail to meet anahata while alive die again and again
anahata is the eternal spring of pleasure
it is love in action
it is God in motion
and it is our
OWN INTIMATE ESSENCE

Dramatis Personae-II

Arjun S Ravi – Palash 5

Guitarist, Cool and suave, had a unique gait, pan-Indian. Nice and friendly.

Arvind – Palash 5

Tried to behave younger than his age, had pluck, depth of thought and could be jovial and mean at the same time, had good perception, was caring without being demonstrative.

Venkat – Palash 5

From veteran communist to novice mystic, tallest in the class, DCP, compassionate towards all, had an aura about him, seeds of greatness.

Pandey – Palash 6

Rare depth, novice psychonaut of the peripheral darkness, from the Hindi heartland,
Inclined towards hindutva nationalism, well-read

Mukul “Doggy” – Palash 6

Gentle and charming, disciplined, analytical, had a softer side, a friend to cherish for a lifetime

Dramatis Personae I

Aakash – Palash 1

Looked like a no-nonsense smuggler or a dogged police chief of a provincial town ; was soft at heart and charmingly traditional with solid family values, a whiz-kid for hunting information on the net, was one of the redeeming three.

Abhishek “Bhatta”- Palash 1

Chotu wisely evaded ragging by coming on the night of freshers. Full of Bengali pride, he was a devotee of Durga and very responsive to the low moods of his friends. Panda called him “Bechu – the seller”. His faffing was crude but effective.

Aman “ Shayar” – Palash 2

Unsure of himself in the beginning and lost in an alien land, his capacity for fantasizing was enormous. With deep emotions that he couldn’t channelize, his fall was poetic with a tinge of absurdity. With an open astral window, he is the protagonist of this story.

Anil “ Gunty” – Palash 2

Deep in his mystic visions, he was a master at deception demanded by mundane concerns. His inner reserves of strength were enormous though the surface betrayed nothing. He went through two emotional journeys of which the second redeemed the first.

Anand “ Bhai” – Palash 3

The wise old man of the batch, he was a soulful singer. Life had tired him a bit though he looked for light in the holes.

Aditya “Adi” – Palash 3

Fond of bihari songs, he hid behind a veneer of casual gestures. Could appreciate hard work. Didn’t reveal much though easy to like.

Anshul – Palash 4

Happy in his masochistic acceptance of life, he was a gifted guitarist. Kept the gospel which he guarded against casual reading. Had learnt the lessons of melancholy. Could be ironical and aloof. Had great depth and hidden beauty.

Anirudh Chaturvedi – Palash 4

Handsome, proud of his lineage and circumspect, loved hindi songs and football. Could be hard-hitting in professionalism. Was searching something without knowing it.

Lord of death

She moves with me
yet remains hidden in the mists of desires
Her red lips of wrath are softened with running tears of compassion
All devouring, all- transcending
eternal annihilator of waking-dreams
Her tongue is the flame of time
She roves in funeral grounds
and sleeps with corpses in war-ravaged climes
She dances when earthquakes flatten the earth
and bombs mingle humanity with primeval dusts
she kisses the old sick man on his lonely hospital-bed
or enters the chest of the young soldier with bullets of fury
she conquers all
kings tremble as cringing insects before her
and gods lie supine in their naked shame when she roars
only before the yogin does she bow
and lower her eyes with shame
as he transcends her
not looking back at her cruel charm
He enters the infinite bliss
and death longs for her lord

Tamas

"The sattva is pure and strong always. It is like the sun. It may seem obscured by clouds and dust, but only from the point of view of the perceiver. Deal with the causes of obscuration, not with the sun."

"Be aware of them ( Tamas and Rajas) in operation, watch their expressions in your thoughts, words and deeds, and gradually their grip on you will lessen and the clear light of sattva will emerge. It is neither difficult, nor a protracted process; earnestness is the only condition of success."

At times I feel I'm befooling myself with empty words and shallow actions. It seems my contemplation is the meditation of a crane. I am trying to run away from myself but there aren't much avenues left. I have had some blessed experiences but there was severe resistance to them from something primitive within me. I know I am effulgent with bliss for I have experienced it but there is also something gross and dark in me; a pygmy lost in his insignificance. Yet the pygmy obstructs the sun by turning away from it and looking only at its petty shadow. Tamas seems strong and hard to conquer and though it is dissolved the moment effulgence shines, it creeps its ugly way with tenacity and gradually obscures the light again.
If my life is full of contradictions and debacles, its just a shadow of human waking existence in general which has nothing great to recommend itself. However the essence behind the mundane is all too beautiful. Its the obstructions that have to be understood and to understand them is to be free from them, once and forever.

The Essence

What is the essence of everything? What underlies everything? It is that which is beyond all manifestations and yet without which no manifestation can ever be possible. That which can never be enjoyed but makes all joy possible, which can never be experienced but makes all experience possible, which can never be recognized as existing but makes all existence possible. But how is such an essence of any use to me and you? How does it matter what lies at the core if it can never be grasped? The answer is- it can never be grasped but is what you would be when you let go of every illusion that you have grasped. The essence is what you have always been without being aware of it. The essence is what makes you love yourself, it is love itself. The essence makes life possible, it is life itself. It is all that is blessed, beautiful, joyous and awesome. It is the supreme flowering of infinite bliss while being always your intimate essence. It is what you are here and now, shorn of all delusions which merely appear to be and which derive their very appearance form the primal essence.Here I want to discuss the concept of void. Some thinkers hold that the universe along with you, me and everything that appears to exist is in reality void or without any essence. In other words nothing really exists. Everything merely appears to be. It can be argued that appearance is as good as existence if it is all there is. Or in other words, non-being has meaning only when distinguished against being. To say that everything is an illusion would give absolute reality to all illusion. After all, illusion is only that which doesn’t really exist but merely appears to be. Indeed if all that is taken to be real derives merely from sensory perception, even this is not true. Senses can merely perceive what appears to be and never what is. Senses don’t perceive atoms or radio waves yet they exist. A standard book on psychology has this to say on illusions. “An illusion is not a trick or a misperception; it is a perception. We call it an illusion simply because it does not agree with our other perceptions.” The essence of everything can never be void. Nothing can ever emerge from nothingness. The essence can be beyond being and not-being. It can transcend void. It can be infinitely subtle and infinitely akin to void but it is impossible that it be void. Indeed the closer the essence would get to void, the more subtle and potent it would become but it would never become the void. It would become infinitely akin to void and in its very approaching void would it become potent to manifest absolutely anything. Absolute void would be absolute bliss, absolute power and absolute existence because its capacity to manifest would be infinite as it would have transcended the last subtle barrier.

Sound And Light

Can it be that consciousness is a type of vibration having light as its essence? Can this sound and light be perceived in the state of deep concentration? Deep meditation and mystic texts suggest as much. In Hindu mysticism, OM is exalted as the highest symbol of the supreme absolute. The essence of OM is sound and light. The Gospel of John in the New Testament similarly mentions the Word (audible vibration) as existing prior to the world and identifies it with God. What does this convey?I am no expert on psychology but I understand every experience has a neural repercussion. Neural transmission is electrical in nature. Cerebral activity that makes consciousness in waking existence possible is also associated with a particular brain wave pattern. Similarly dreaming and dreamless sleep too have neural and brain-wave associations. Can experiences transcending the biological body be associated with commonly unperceived ‘waves of consciousness’ that dissolve what is understood as perceptible matter in waking state into something altogether different?Dispassion is the sharpest weapon in mysticism. Freedom form the constrained is gained through deep aversion for it. Why is it so? Why do all mystic texts exhort the seeker to shed desire? Sunlight illuminates and doesn’t know what darkness is. The essence is ever pure and blessed. Every blemish is a mistaken appearance which is annihilated forever when the essence is known. What obstructs the essence? Desire does. Desire tries to grasp a manifestation which cannot be grasped. All grasping is an illusion and it produces the illusion of suffering after a while if not immediately. Manifestations are inherent in the natural effulgence of essence. However by itself the essence neither causes manifestations nor is it dependent on or limited by its effulgence.Is their a way out of the net cast by unruly desires? One way is to desire the highest, the greatest and the most perfect that can be conceived of and to make this supreme desire too great to be sidelined by petty urges. Desire supreme infinite bliss, at once eternal and all-encompassing. Desire to be God. Don’t be satisfied with anything less. Intensity of one master passion would subdue all inferior desires. Soon it would be realized that the individuated can never encompass the unlimited. Eternal bliss can never be enjoyed by any body limited by time. Even the universe is transient. The only way out is to transcend the body and all other sheaths that imprison and suffocate pure bliss of uncontaminated being. But wouldn’t annihilation of the body end consciousness? This is the primary question. Is consciousness a manifestation of matter or is matter manifested in consciousness? The unequivocal answer of all mysticism is that matter is a gross manifestation of an essence beyond anything material, beyond energy and beyond consciousness and even bliss.

States Of Consciousness

Three states of individuated human existence viz. waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep are well understood. The memory of previous events registered in waking existence is commonly understood as ‘my life’ in a nostalgic mood. However memory is fallible and distorted. To romanticize the past is common. Yet, on probing further, what constitutes an experience? Is it a subjective interpretation of neural activity associated with sensory stimuli? Or is neural activity merely a repercussion of extra-neural consciousness. Genes can as well be caused by consciousness and an interface between its subtle and gross manifestations rather than causing consciousness. It’s logical for the subtle to be the cause of the gross rather than the other way around. If waking existence is life, how are dreams and the deepest dreamless sleep classified? Dreams are often echoes of the waking existence but may not necessarily be so. And dreamless sleep ordinarily lies beyond cognition. To wake in the deepest dreamless sleep is the beginning of self-discovery. The empirical pseudo-self derived from sensory perceptions colored by memories and anticipation is a mere shadow of the essence.It is well understood that matter and energy can be transformed into one-another but can never be destroyed. Matter is gross energy while energy is subtle matter. Where does consciousness originate? Is it a kind of subtle energy? Or is it altogether different?

Holes in the net

“ The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-l-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being. But you must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not a part-time occupation. Limit your interests and activities to what is needed for you and your dependents' barest needs. Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.”This is a quote from “I am that”, a series of talks between Nisargadatta Maharaj and seekers. The enquiry into “I” as the root of all experience, as the very seed of life is the method elucidated in these conversations as I understand them. The truth of being cannot be logically denied. Whatever my state of being may be, it derives from and presupposes my being. And while the state is transient, the being is transcendental. To be free of all existential discord, the root of individuated existence must be scrutinized. What the result of the inquiry would be depends on earnestness of effort. However before delving into ‘an experience of that which experiences’, it must be understood that every mystical trance or vision, however beautiful and blissful, necessarily ends as it is within time. The essence can never be known through its manifestations, however pleasing they may be per se.Individuated human existence is insipid and devoid of any lasting joy. Momentary joys are many but they appear only against a background of dullness, or worse suffering. The joy of deep sleep is against the background of the monotony of waking existence. The pleasure of sex lasts but a moment and usually causes much pain and perversion. Attachment to somebody from the opposite sex seldom leads to lasting love and is frequently corroded by jealousy and possessive instinct. And what is lasting in a life that lasts but a moment? Even relatively innocent human relations that enrich are transient episodes in the drama of life. Youth lives in fear of old age or in an ignorant shell which gives way to despair when broken. Being a health ‘freak’ is itself a symptom of psychological unrest and instability. Wealth is no surety for happiness and is a tyrant if its end is not clearly defined. Power is either severely restricted or if mighty for a time, soon ends in assassination or worse, disgrace or subsequent anonymity. Even if shorn of hyperbole and calamities, the garment of happiness woven by wealth and power as fabric is rent apart by time.

Tantra

Tantra means interwoven. Its the interwoven fabric of cosmic life of which individuated existence is but a strand. However every strand is necessary for the wholeness of the fabric. Every strand is complete as a part of the whole and to realise its unity with the whole is to abide in tantra. A tantrik renounces all individuated craving and aligns himself with cosmic will. Thus his desire corresponds with whatever nature has to offer at the given moment. If rain is about to come, he desires it a moment before. Similarly he feels an urge to make love just before the actual opportunity arises. Thus he abides in the bliss of being.

Neti Neti

Not this, Not that.
I am not anything conceivable, perceptible or imaginable.
I am not the senses, body, mind, intellect or ego.
I am not of any age, sex or gender.
I am not the waking,dreaming or sleeping states.
I am neither the experience, nor the one who experiences.
I am neither primal consciousness nor its potentiality.
I am not existence or its seed.
I am neither bliss nor the enjoyer.
Such aphorisms of Indian mysticism enthrall me.

Nisarga

"All changes in consciousness are due to the 'I-am-the-body' idea. Divested of this idea the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, free of experiencing anything in particular. But to realise it you must do what your teacher tells you. Mere listening, even memorizing, is not enough. If you do not struggle hard to apply every word of it in your daily life, don't complain that you made no progress. All real progress is irreversible. Ups and downs merely show that the teaching has not been taken to heart and translated into action fully."
"Immobility and silence are not inactive. The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle -- with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence. You can photograph the candle, but not its light. You can know the man, his name and appearance, but not his influence. His very presence is action."
"Absolutely none. Leave your mind alone, that is all. Don't go along with it. After all, there is no such thing as mind apart from thoughts which come and go obeying their own laws, not yours. They dominate you only because you are interested in them. It is exactly as Christ said 'Resist not evil'. By resisting evil you merely strengthen it."
"In love there is not the one even, how can there be two? Love is the refusal to separate, to make distinctions. Before you can think of unity, you must first create duality. When you truly love, you do not say: 'I love you'; where there is mention, there is duality."
"In every event the entire universe is reflected. The ultimate cause is untraceable. The very idea of causation is only a way of thinking and speaking. We cannot imagine, uncaused emergence. This, however, does not prove the existence of causation."
"You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable."
These are the blessed words of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a great master of non-duality who taught concentration on the sense of 'I Am' without identification with any experience as the shortest route to realization.

Forest Of Words

Shankara compares the plethora of scriptures to a ‘trap of words which is akin to a forest in which the hapless mind wanders’. To mistake mere scriptural knowledge to realization is a grave error. Reading is of almost no use except if it results in an earnest inquiry which leads to clear insight. Usually reading mystic philosophy is intellectual entertainment at best and a major impediment at worst. It is ironical that I am writing this since whoever reads me would be committing the very error I am warning against! Not that what I write springs from any real knowledge. It is like a movie that criticizes cinema. Many of the greatest mystics like Ramakrishna were illiterate. They wanted only the inner language of bliss. If my history is correct, Nanak asked his tutor to teach him that knowledge which would liberate rather than mundane subjects that would bind. My own experiences are limited but the spark they have ignited in me would one day burn all ignorance like a mountain of hay. At one time reading may have helped me but it’s a major impediment now. Discussing mysticism and writing about it are also ego-driven delusions. I wish I could concentrate on solitary meditation but it seems I have a few bridges to cross.

Crumbling Bedrock

All the cheaters of the world are nothing when compared to them who cheat on themselves. Yesterday I impersonated as a customer to glean information from a long-established competitor of the concern I work for. It caused me significant ethical distress and I lost the inner peace so essential to meditate. It also made me acutely aware of the colossus contradictions inherent in me. While professing to realize the blessed unity beyond apparent divisions, I have never developed the ethical bedrock on which the edifice of sustained meditation has to be assiduously built. My past is marred by blatant lies, delusions, lust and jealousy. By being dishonest to myself I have obstructed my inner effulgence to shine in its magnificent splendor. However, I feel introspection rather than self-condemnation is the way out. I must find out what makes me immoral and remove the obstructions.

Path of the mystic- II

“ The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so', beyond 'so-l-am', beyond 'I-am-the-witness-only', beyond 'there-is', beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being. But you must be energetic when you take to meditation. It is definitely not a part-time occupation. Limit your interests and activities to what is needed for you and your dependents' barest needs. Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.”
This is a quote from “I am that”, a series of talks between Nisargadatta Maharaj and seekers. The enquiry into “I” as the root of all experience, as the very seed of life is the method elucidated in these conversations as I understand them. The truth of being cannot be logically denied. Whatever my state of being may be, it derives from and presupposes my being. And while the state is transient, the being is transcendental. To be free of all existential discord, the root of individuated existence must be scrutinized. What the result of the inquiry would be depends on earnestness of effort. However before delving into ‘an experience of that which experiences’, it must be understood that every mystical trance or vision, however beautiful and blissful, necessarily ends as it is within time. The essence can never be known through its manifestations, however pleasing they may be per se.
Individuated human existence is insipid and devoid of any lasting joy. Momentary joys are many but they appear only against a background of dullness, or worse suffering. The joy of deep sleep is against the background of the monotony of waking existence. The pleasure of sex lasts but a moment and usually causes much pain and perversion. Attachment to somebody from the opposite sex seldom leads to lasting love and is frequently corroded by jealousy and possessive instinct. And what is lasting in a life that lasts but a moment? Even relatively innocent human relations that enrich are transient episodes in the drama of life. Youth lives in fear of old age or in an ignorant shell which gives way to despair when broken. Being a health ‘freak’ is itself a symptom of psychological unrest and instability. Wealth is no surety for happiness and is a tyrant if its end is not clearly defined. Power is either severely restricted or if mighty for a time, soon ends in assassination or worse, disgrace or subsequent anonymity. Even if shorn of hyperbole and calamities, the garment of happiness woven by wealth and power as fabric is rent apart by time.
Three states of individuated human existence viz. waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep are well understood. The memory of previous events registered in waking existence is commonly understood as ‘my life’ in a nostalgic mood. However memory is fallible and distorted. To romanticize the past is common. Yet, on probing further, what constitutes an experience? Is it a subjective interpretation of neural activity associated with sensory stimuli? Or is neural activity merely a repercussion of extra-neural consciousness. Genes can as well be caused by consciousness and an interface between its subtle and gross manifestations rather than causing consciousness. It’s logical for the subtle to be the cause of the gross rather than the other way around. If waking existence is life, how are dreams and the deepest dreamless sleep classified? Dreams are often echoes of the waking existence but may not necessarily be so. And dreamless sleep ordinarily lies beyond cognition. To wake in the deepest dreamless sleep is the beginning of self-discovery. The empirical pseudo-self derived from sensory perceptions colored by memories and anticipation is a mere shadow of the essence.
It is well understood that matter and energy can be transformed into one-another but can never be destroyed. Matter is gross energy while energy is subtle matter. Where does consciousness originate? Is it a kind of subtle energy? Or is it altogether different? Can it be that consciousness is a type of vibration having light as its essence? Can this sound and light be perceived in the state of deep concentration? Deep meditation and mystic texts suggest as much. In Hindu mysticism, OM is exalted as the highest symbol of the supreme absolute. The essence of OM is sound and light. The Gospel of John in the New Testament similarly mentions the Word (audible vibration) as existing prior to the world and identifies it with God. What does this convey?
I am no expert on psychology but I understand every experience has a neural repercussion. Neural transmission is electrical in nature. Cerebral activity that makes consciousness in waking existence possible is also associated with a particular brain wave pattern. Similarly dreaming and dreamless sleep too have neural and brain-wave associations. Can experiences transcending the biological body be associated with commonly unperceived ‘waves of consciousness’ that dissolve what is understood as perceptible matter in waking state into something altogether different?
Dispassion is the sharpest weapon in mysticism. Freedom form the constrained is gained through deep aversion for it. Why is it so? Why do all mystic texts exhort the seeker to shed desire? Sunlight illuminates and doesn’t know what darkness is. The essence is ever pure and blessed. Every blemish is a mistaken appearance which is annihilated forever when the essence is known. What obstructs the essence? Desire does. Desire tries to grasp a manifestation which cannot be grasped. All grasping is an illusion and it produces the illusion of suffering after a while if not immediately. Manifestations are inherent in the natural effulgence of essence. However by itself the essence neither causes manifestations nor is it dependent on or limited by its effulgence.
Is their a way out of the net cast by unruly desires? One way is to desire the highest, the greatest and the most perfect that can be conceived of and to make this supreme desire too great to be sidelined by petty urges. Desire supreme infinite bliss, at once eternal and all-encompassing. Desire to be God. Don’t be satisfied with anything less. Intensity of one master passion would subdue all inferior desires. Soon it would be realized that the individuated can never encompass the unlimited. Eternal bliss can never be enjoyed by any body limited by time. Even the universe is transient. The only way out is to transcend the body and all other sheaths that imprison and suffocate pure bliss of uncontaminated being. But wouldn’t annihilation of the body end consciousness? This is the primary question. Is consciousness a manifestation of matter or is matter manifested in consciousness? The unequivocal answer of all mysticism is that matter is a gross manifestation of an essence beyond anything material, beyond energy and beyond consciousness and even bliss.
What is the essence of everything? What underlies everything? It is that which is beyond all manifestations and yet without which no manifestation can ever be possible. That which can never be enjoyed but makes all joy possible, which can never be experienced but makes all experience possible, which can never be recognized as existing but makes all existence possible. But how is such an essence of any use to me and you? How does it matter what lies at the core if it can never be grasped? The answer is- it can never be grasped but is what you would be when you let go of every illusion that you have grasped. The essence is what you have always been without being aware of it. The essence is what makes you love yourself, it is love itself. The essence makes life possible, it is life itself. It is all that is blessed, beautiful, joyous and awesome. It is the supreme flowering of infinite bliss while being always your intimate essence. It is what you are here and now, shorn of all delusions which merely appear to be and which derive their very appearance form the primal essence.
Here I want to discuss the concept of void. Some thinkers hold that the universe along with you, me and everything that appears to exist is in reality void or without any essence. In other words nothing really exists. Everything merely appears to be. It can be argued that appearance is as good as existence if it is all there is. Or in other words, non-being has meaning only when distinguished against being. To say that everything is an illusion would give absolute reality to all illusion. After all, illusion is only that which doesn’t really exist but merely appears to be. Indeed if all that is taken to be real derives merely from sensory perception, even this is not true. Senses can merely perceive what appears to be and never what is. Senses don’t perceive atoms or radio waves yet they exist. A standard book on psychology has this to say on illusions. “An illusion is not a trick or a misperception; it is a perception. We call it an illusion simply because it does not agree with our other perceptions.” The essence of everything can never be void. Nothing can ever emerge from nothingness. The essence can be beyond being and not-being. It can transcend void. It can be infinitely subtle and infinitely akin to void but it is impossible that it be void. Indeed the closer the essence would get to void, the more subtle and potent it would become but it would never become the void. It would become infinitely akin to void and in its very approaching void would it become potent to manifest absolutely anything. Absolute void would be absolute bliss, absolute power and absolute existence because its capacity to manifest would be infinite as it would have transcended the last subtle barrier.

Path of the mystic - I

Happiness is the primary need of conscious existence. To exist without being joyous is to be in a rut. However sensory pleasures are evanescent and too often, pain and absurdity vitiate the song of life. Besides, the realization of sure death haunts mortals. Ordinary human existence is too constrained to be a harmony. Limited by a material body, random thoughts and sensory stimulus, consciousness feels encaged and suffocated. The desire to find happiness amd fulfillment leads us to distant places, makes us explore the unknown frontiers of science and dives us into religious speculation. From recreational drugs to chanting of mantras, all have happiness as the motive. Yet, is the momentary bliss gained through random means worth the effort if it does not last?
Deep within himself, even a sinner knows he doesn't deserve the unpleasant state he is in? Even a street urchin or a beggar knows deep inside that he deserves happiness. Howsoever crushed we may be by calamities of time and the painful memory of unrequitted love (my personal pang) , the strong conviction that life wasn't meant to be such a futile chaos never leaves us. What is the fountainhead of this eternal spring of hope? Post world war II and the holocaust it entailed, Freud introduced the concept of Thanatos or 'death wish' to account for the destructive energy of mankind which was displayed on such a large scale. He held that mankind is haunted by death wish as an extension of the tendency of matter to be inert. Thus he held human consciousness to be material along with body. According to Freud or materialistic philosophers, consciousness must be an energy rather than matter because of its subtle character. However as Einstein's famous equation expresses it, even matter can never be destroyed but only be transformed. Matter and energy can be transformed into each other while the sum total of universal matter and energy remains constant. Thus the proposition that human misery would necessarily terminate with bodily death is bad logic.

Mystic experiences

Till the end of 2005 I had a solid empirical approach to life with my views similar to those expressed by mainstream science. However since then experience has made me wiser. Now its impossible to ignore the experiences I and certain other people have had which cannot be easily understood. I know of more than a dozen people who have experienced inner vibration and effulgence. When concentration becomes profound and interiorized an audible vibration manifests which leads to effulgence when deeply concentrated upon. As the effulgence becomes profound, body consciousness is lost. The point between the two eyebrows and at times certain points at the top of the skull become deeply sensitive to blissful sensations. Many mystical traditions like 'Surat shabad yoga' and Paramahansa Yogananda's 'kriya yoga' elucidate such experiences. However there are major points of disagreement in these mystic traditions. While traditions generally clubbed under 'surat-shabd yoga' and 'santmat' consider ' living Guru' as sine qua non without which the seeker may be waylaid and may even end up in a worse psychological state due to his unguided meditation, SRF/YSS based on the teachings of Paramahansa yogananda who is no longer physicaly alive, stress the need of the right meditation as described in their printed lessons rather than a living Guru.

Sannyasa

Does formal renunciation pave the way for self-realization? Kabir was married and so was Nanak. Mysticism is an internal process that grows as mind expands into its primal essence. External renunciation with craving intact merely makes for hypocrisy. Yet to be able to devote one's entire waking hours to meditation without any worldly concerns would indeed be a major benefit if the renunciate is earnest. The few sannyasis I have met had a palpable aura of silent majesty about them. Yet they weren't entirely free from ego and other ills of the world. I personaly prefer mysticism rather than any external ritual or intellectual study. The true renunciate is free from desire while outwardly engaged in activity. However to write all this is mere intellectual conceit for me as I lack adequate experience.

Kabir - song of the mystic

Gagan Ki Ot Nisana Hai Bhai
Dahine Sur Chandrama Banye
Tin Ke Beech Chipana Hai Bhai
Tan Ki Kaman Surat Ka Raunda
Shabad Baan Le Taana Hai Bhai
Maarat Baan Bidha Tan Hi Tan
Satguru Ka Parwana Hai Bhai
Maaryo Baan Ghav Nahin Tan Me
Jin Laaga Tin Jaana Hai Bhai
Kahe Kabir Suno Bhai Sadho
Jin Jaana Tin Maana Hai Bhai

Concealed Beyond the Sky is the Target
On the Right is the Sun, Moon is on the Left
Bisecting them it has to be Hidden
Body is the Bow, Consciousness is the Roll of String
Unstruck Sound is the Arrow - Erect and Ready to Take Off
The Arrow is Released Leaving the Body-Instrument Behind
It's the Messenger of the True-Guru
Despite Shooting the Arrow there is no Injury Mark on the Body
Only those who are Struck Experience it
Says Kabir Listen Oh Practicing AspirantThose who Experience Know it

Deep mystic experiences are elucidated in verses such as this. When consciousness becomes centred on the inner subtle vibration, wondrous experiences enfold. This poem has reference to consciously induced NDE, OBE, astral projection, inner vibratory current and the ensuing cosmic voyage. It cannot be interpreted except by experienced practitioners. Others like me can be inspired by it but must not read too much of their own making into it. Only experience can liberate and theory is only hollow conceit of a befuddled intellect.

The Riot

" Put a tyre around his shoulders, pour petrol and burn him." It was twilight in Ahmedabad. They were atleast twenty men. And they were talking of burning me alive. I was staring at death. Strangely i wasn't afraid. I tried to reason with them. I tried to convince them I wasn't a Muslim. I tried to chant 'hare rama hare krishna' or some other hindu mantra. They weren't amused. One of them hit me with a stout stick. But his blow was hesitant. Others goaded him not to be afraid and to hit me with vigour. I felt another blow on my head. I saw no point in fighting that horde; or in running. They were too many and I was alone. I calmly bore their half-hearted attempts at beating me. Soon they were tired and started pushing me. They warned me never to come back to their locality. I didn't say I wasn't interested. When I somehow made it to the hospital, the X-rays didn't show significant injuries. But my mind couldn't be scanned. I knew that day what it meant to be a Muslim in Gujarat.

Death

priyanka.she has gifted me a slow death.or have i gifted it to myself
and malign her name
i think of her.i dream of her.and she is not mine.she's a mirage that i
chase and my lips are parched
she is a shadow that i want to grasp
a dirge that i want to sing in a marriage
a death that i want to live
a pain that i want to adore
a void i want to bless existence
i have even lost my way with words
my muse has deserted me
life doesn't seem worth living and death doesn't come
how beautiful death is,how serene,peaceful,loving,all accepting
death loves all,accepts all
she loves and accepts saint and sinner,the mighty and the humble,the wise and the fool alike in her loving arm
then why has death forsaken me
why doesn't she embrace me in her extinction
i wish death would come
like mother's love
she would end my pain
i would cry into her bosom and she would understand
i would tell her how i loved priyanka and how i suffered for her and she would understand
and i would be happy that she understood
and she would tell me of the day when she would embrace her too
and unite her and everybody else with me
amd me with everybody else
till everybody and everything becomes one
and eternal unity
prevails

Jealosy

Can hatred spring from love? Animal hatred, at once passionate and bloodthirsty. I love her or do I hate her for loving him. I have burnt in my own personal hell- the hell of jealousy. All my illusions of love, of tenderness have been swept away. I wish he were never born. Or that I were dead.I hate him for being loved by her. The more she loves him, the more I want to kill him. It wouldn't satisfy me to murder him. If I achieve absolute power, I would gas him to death. No, I would invent seventh degree torture and make him a specimen of living death while denying him the luxury of death. I would make him suffer physically what I have borne mentally. He is my beloved's boyfriend. She adores him. I have loved her ever since I was thirteen. I never as much as thought about another girl. She is everything to me. And then I came to know about him. And my love vanished into the quagmire of jealousy and bestial hatred. How can hatred spring from love. Was my love a charade altogether? Did I never love her, not even for a single moment? Was I living in an empty emotion for eight years? She lambasted I didn't knew what love was.Now after two and a half years, I still felt like breaking his skull when she introduced him to me. Yeah I hate him for being loved by her. For snatching her away from me. For defeating me. For hurting my ego as nobody ever can. For showing me the hollowness of what I considered sacred in me. May God give him peace and the gift of pure love which He denied to me. May she be happy in his love. Only that these are mere moral dictums. Not my feelings. I am too human. I know too well the pangs of jealousy, the inferno of hatred, the pain of being robbed of a delusion.

Turiya

Loss of body consciousness is the pre-requisite for embarking on the spiritual plane of existence. The human body is what ties pure awareness to gross matter and prevents its true essence from joyous self-expression. Three planes of existence are accessible to all. The waking state is the gross state with sensory inputs and their co-ordination creating the transient illusion of commonplace "reality". The dream state manifests with the loss of sensory constraints. The mind is free to create its own "reality' and space-time limitations that predominate in the waking state are transcended. The third state is deep dreamless state when the dreamer is not even aware that he is dreaming. To become awake in the deepest dreamless sleep is to attain pure consciousness free from ego,intellect,emotions and sensory inputs. Thus the spiritual essence is manifested. This is known as 'turiya' or the fourth state in Indian mysticism and santori in other oriental traditions.

Home

Where even nothingness is not, there would I merge;
The eternal unmanifest is my blessed abode
To play a yonder mirth I lurk in duality
Till the unstruck sound leads me Home

Insanity

Sanity has no accepted definition. Views on what constitutes normal behaviour vary across space and time. A Tantrik who meditates on a corpse in a funeral ground may be regarded as a seeker by some and a deviant by others. People who claim to have the ability to leave the gross body at will and enter astral realms can't be easily catalogued into neat behavioural categories. One easy way to avoid confusion is to avoid all mention of what lies beyond the usually accepted norms in social interactions.However at times what lies beyond becomes manifest in the mundane sphere when the seeker is the least prepared.
An ardent devotee of Krishna has His blessed vision. What is it? Divine grace? Hallucination? Both? What parameters decide the label? Modern psychology is too narrow to encompass the infinite miracles inherent in human consciousness. Dwarfed deductions of pygmies cannot limit the majesty of giants. As Ramakrishna said, " Those who sell brinjals would do well not to judge the price of diamonds."