Wednesday, December 24, 2008
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.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 18, 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.
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.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
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.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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.
( 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.
Monday, June 23, 2008
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.'
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'
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'
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')
(abridged from 'Reality is Imagined')
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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
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
Saturday, June 21, 2008
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
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
Saturday, June 14, 2008
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
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
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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 .
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, June 2, 2008
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.
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.
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