Embracing Pain

   Who but a masochist would wish to embrace pain ? Isn't it natural to crave pleasure and to run away from what is noxious ? Strangely, experience has taught me that fleeing from pain may not be the best thing to do and might even be unhealthy in the long run. Pain ought to be seen as a symptom of a deeper malaise. Just as physical pain indicates that something is wrong with the body, so does psychological suffering point towards a void in the psyche.
    If one were to suppress physical pain by taking a palliative while leaving the core cause untouched, the problem from which the pain springs would only worsen till it ends up doing grave damage. Similarly escaping psychological pain by any kind of medication or intoxication or even through suppression wouldn't purge the heart of the demons that are assailing its depth. Confronting the demons that make one's life  a living hell might be unbearably taxing but it is also truly therapeutic in the long run. Indeed, confronting pain can even give one access to hitherto hidden aspects of one's personality.
      At times accepting pain wholeheartedly and even succumbing to it in its totality is the best thing one can do for one's self growth. If accepted as a valid rhythm of life, pain works its alchemy and transforms the psyche into a more mature and mellow force.

The myth of Panthoibi

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

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

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

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

Goddess of Death

I am the naked sword of eternal annihilation.

The laughter of final Death.

Why look for me in incensed sanctuaries?

Come if you are among the scions of Warriors.

Come to the very depth of dark Hades where Void laughs Her terrors.

Wade through the ocean of funeral fires.

Swallow up cosmos after cosmos

And look at my Terror, if you can!

Explosion of Bliss!

Memory is not experience. It doesn’t have the flavour of what it seeks to recollect. Yet, some pointers are so significant that even a vague remnant of their flame in a hidden crevice of the dark shadows of our past can still enlighten the alive present. In the winter of 06, I spent a few extremely significant weeks in solitary meditation. I did it in my own bedroom. Telling mother to keep some food for me in the fridge but to never ask me to come for any of the meals and having extracted the promise that nobody would ever come into my room or disturb me in any manner, I went deeper and still deeper into the layers of my being. My room had an attached bath and I had the least need to venture out. I came out only once, around 2 every night, to have a meagre cold meal. I drank quite a lot of water with honey and some milk. Besides that, I just stayed in the room, concentrating neither on mantra, nor on breath and following no meditation. I just let myself go deeper and still deeper in the space of free awareness, without any hope or fear, and with no formulation, either secular or spiritual. There was no communication of any sort with anybody in those weeks.
Since I never met any other, the need of the self to emerge was diminished. As external language became redundant, thoughts, which is just internal language, too subsided and gradually became almost indiscernible. The expanding field of pure awareness, which I often experience as a vibration, sometimes as a current like sensation and at others as an audible ‘air’ became increasingly intense. There were times when a great engulfing vibrating density was experienced in the entire room and when one’s fingertip touched it, a sensation very close to an electric shock was experienced, though it wasn’t unduly unpleasant. At other times, a great expansion was experienced…an expansion so great that awareness encompassed an immense vastness…a sky within which great planetary bodies were experienced and a sun like star. These massive heavenly bodies were experienced in the space of vastly expanded awareness, without any experience of the human dimension…without a mind with its thoughts and without a body with its terrible limitations. The sense of ‘I’ in these spaces of vastness emerged only from time to time and its leitmotif was always a great and always fresh wonder.
It was in this phase that I had my only full-blown and clearly experienced NDE (near death experience). I had become quite used to the immense expansions in awareness and there was no need of the articulation of consciousness in the human dimension as a person. Indeed ‘I’ was experienced only as an emergent sense of wonder which came only from time to time in those vast spaces. That evening, the same wondrous vastness was experienced. As was my habit in those days, I was lying down on the bed with my head perpendicular to the rest of my body at the medulla point. The immense expansion was experienced in that state. Gradually I went into a deep state of extremely profound sleep or extraordinarily subtle awareness…a kind of ‘shunyata’ or ‘creative void’…sleep is quite the wrong word to use for it. It was dark before I lost consciousness of the external world so I am not sure for how long was I in that state. However, when awareness returned, it was into a most strange state. The first thing I noticed, to my intense discomfort, was an absolute inability to breathe, even after trying really hard. It was a really unpleasant choking sensation…like being under water…I was absolutely unable to breathe. My body was…well…absolutely absent. There was no sensation of any kind of the body. Absolutely none! However, an intense oceanic sword or river like sharpely pointed mass of pure vibrational consciousness was penetrating a minute point at the nape of my neck, possibly the medulla point. It was entering with serpentine motion, and it was intense and massive…pure vibration of awareness…and it added to the discomfort. Not only was I completely suffocated, but a great sword was entering the nape of my neck! However I did realize that strangely I wasn’t dying or losing consciousness despite the absence of breath. I also became more aware of the great river of awareness entering my neck. I felt death was very close. Strangely there was no memory of any kind of ever having been a human…no image of my body or that of parents or any friend…not even a single flashback of any kind. There was a fear but no memory. Soon an ever-widening spiral movement of awareness was experienced and the expansion was me! Even the consciousness of the nape of the neck vanished in the great rising spiral. In that rising spiral, light and darkness had strangely blended together…At what seemed the apex, the presence of the Beas mystics was experienced. I somehow knew I would lose consciousness and just before the blast, I prayed that my Guru must come to my rescue.
The experience this far was anything but pleasant and soothing. Indeed I had never been more afraid in my entire life, though I consider myself pretty brave but I was really scared and felt I would most certainly die. However the climax was so extraordinarily exhilarating that I would gladly go through a million repetitions of the ordeal. While it was still dark, awareness came with a tremendous explosion…my brain was flooded with a veritable ocean of pure ecstasy. Every neuron was dancing with a joy that was infinite love and the profoundest bliss. Waves of supernal ecstasy were continuously exploding in my head. It was most sacred, infinitely intimate and more joyous than a trillion times trillion orgasms happening together!!! That joy stayed with me for hours and its memory still nourishes me even in the most taxing times.

Awareness

The Purity of Absolute Nothingness negates itself and creates the infinity of Being in Awareness. As Buddha says, "Form is shunyata and shunyata is form. There is no form without shunyata and there is no shunyata without form." He further said, 'To meditate on shunyata is futile like being a moth burning in a flame. While the moth that burns in fire atleast achieves extinction and hence the end of its suffering, the one who merely meditates on nothingness just suffers endlessly.' Nothingness or Mahashunya is just a transitory state before the Supreme Conscious Bliss which is verily Paramatman. The Spanda Karika or 'stanzas on vibration' specificaly counter the deluded belief in 'nothingness'. To quote from the Spanda Karika (Stanzas on Vibration), a beautiful flowering of Kashmir Shaiv mysticism,

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

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

Again,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shunyata is like a bathroom where the soul washes off all taints of materialism and becomes pure spirit and then an enjoyer of the Supreme Conscious Bliss and then verily Supreme Conscious Bliss whih is Paramatman. Nothingness as an intermediary state is crucial but any idea of 'absolute nothingess' as an abiding state is a delusion. The Spanda Karika and Shiva Sutras and also yogic experience is absolutely clear on this.

Nothingness as the end goal of spirituality is tantamount to accepting existentialism nihilism and would make everythign futile.

Wonder

Wonder takes a form and becomes the Presence!

The Immensity

What is the end of our search? Or is the endless search its own end? The movement of life with its turns and twists experienced as joys and sorrows comes from a deep Unknown and seems to move towards an even deeper Unknown. While going through the business of being alive, there is an intensity of awareness which seems to come from a source much deeper than memory and hope. Awareness inheres in a timeless, spaceless grand essence which is neither of being nor of nothingness. At an earlier juncture, I would have been content to see a holistic awareness as the grand essence. But it increasingly seems apparent that the essence transcends awareness. The Grand Essence speaks through Awareness but is neither of awareness nor of oblivion. Neither being nor nothingness penetrate it. Indeed, what is being from one vantage point is nothingness from another. In the night, when I go off to sleep and enter the universe of dreams, it can also be said that I wake up from the waking sleep into the dreaming wakefulness. This long dream that I take for life seems mere nothingness compared to the transcendental experiences of a tremendous expansion that touch me at times. Those times seem free from the very notions of time and space and my entire life as a human being and experience as a human body seem like evanescent visions in a hypnotic mist. When I say I do not really feel I am only human or am living a truly ‘real’ life, I do not mean it in an abstract or philosophical sense. Even a dream cannot be called a dream until it meets its end in a higher reality. Here the maxim is that Reality is as Imagined as Imagination is Real. Ultimately, what is taken as reality and what as imagination is a matter of conviction and hidden predilections. I am not talking about a purely ideational negation of the reality of the objective world for that would be mere wishful thinking and reality is too obdurate for such escapism to last for long. I am talking about an experiential realization of a reality so immense and transcendental that empirical reality and the usual life utterly pales in its comparison. Clearly, such an experience doesn’t happen to many and is not bound to happen again even if it happens once but to those who touch the Transcendental, the sharpness of the empirical reality is blunted forever. My own experiences of the Vast oceanic awareness has made me an onlooker, a stranger to the mirage like shadows of human life. I know integration is desirable and even necessary but at times the human dimension seems too prosaic for me to want to be integrated with it. Everything is half-baked here. The Whole is not amenable to human categorizations like good and evil or existential speculation like Being and Nothingness. Even the immensity of physical universe is neither Being nor Nothingness. The stars we see in the night sky are not what they seem. Too many light years have passed and some of them have withered before there light could reach us. And the very notion of an infinite Universe is built upon the juxtaposition of an infinite points of condensed matter, the stars in space illumined by their expansion. If the points were taken away, the space would be neither finite nor infinite, neither of being nor of nothingness. Without matter, space is neither empty nor full; indeed it is hardly space. It is the great Unknown, the immensity which can contain absolutely anything. For awareness, the Great Immensity is revealed when all thoughts become still without even an iota of dullness because thought-patterns in the mind function as starry constellations in the spaceless and timeless physical trans-universe. Just as stars create both time and space, thought-patterns create psychological time and space and the resultant web of pleasure and pain, hope and fear et al. Meditation is then the retention of profound awareness minus any content; an awareness of Awareness rather than an awareness of thought. The pure Awareness free from all content is the window to that which transcends Awareness itself and is absolutely beyond everything, beyond even the notion of beyond. And once the Immensity appears, meditation becomes redundant and is dropped as the boat once the river has been crossed.

Burning joy

this is a joy
which naturaly wants to spread
and it sustains itself through burning the net of cosmic illusion
the more it burns
the brighter it burns

the more souls it touches
the brighter its flame
its like a roket that gains that escape velocity
to transcend gravity
this supreme quest
that defies all 'natural' laws
to touch the Presence
beyond and yet enlightening nature
Its joy is immeasurable and ever-new

its sport the creation and dissolution of cosmos
its mystery the end of all knowledge
its bliss the fountainhead of all happiness
what i told you last night
my exp
was touching the presence
when freed from my biological garment
or 'pseudo-body'
i experienced the presence
as unimaginable
Bliss
joy beyond all earthly ideas of pleasure
an all-accepting, all-burning joy
today, when i was typing my limited take on Krishna's eternal geeta
i felt a much heightened presence


a few months back
one of my hostel buddies wanted me to record
an interview with him for linguistic analysis
he asked me to talk on a topic i was comfortable with
i talked on mysticism
and after 5-10 mts
i felt the Presence
and it almost wiped me off

The Immensity of Silence

Boundless Love and Immense Peace move in the Unimaginable Silence. I hear that Silence and laugh my tears in Her bosom. She asks why do I stray and I tell Her of all the great games I have played and the Universes I have woven. She listens not to the tales of the game but is happy at the wonder in my eyes.

New Song

Tell me, O Angel, of the mist stained day,
When oft longed, ever betrayed hopes
And dreams of languid love and joy
Came to me in human garb

The sun shone for me to see you
Language existed for us to talk
And the Big Bang happened
That the two of us may meet
And look together into the vastness of sky

Bliss flowed in my arteries
And Joy became my breath
Love was the elixir that I drank
And your sweetness my food

Too bright you shone for me to see
The pallor that hid in silent crevices
Words unspoken and eyes unmoved
Gave more to hope than to conceal

Fire was the joy that burnt in me
But its flames were soothing
My eyes were ablaze
With cosmic hopes that shone in you

When did the sun set and the dark cast its gloom?
Where went the starry heavens of night
Whence came the blackest night that ate
The very galaxies that find their day in her

Where is the night that hasn’t her day?
Darkness comes to brighten the light
And ever fresh joy emerges from the void
Which devours all that is stale and pallid

Come then, angel, play another harp
And another song on a new note
Show me the Sun that never sets
And plays with night as His wing

Let castle sands merge in desert
And water ripples become the river
We will play another harp
And an eternal Song on a new note
Till pain and Joy marry in Bliss

Void

I lie supine in my naked shame
Bereft of love
Mocked by the Universe
And shorn of selfhood

My rhythms are disrupted
And wolves howl in the inner cavern
Fangs of delusion cleave me
And a naked sword searches by bosom

Why do I breathe?
Why is my body so adamant?
When my mind has coiled unto himself
And my spirit has been scathed?

Whence does this power come?
What is the spring of this surging life?
Who plays these notes of strength?

A music moves the cosmic spheres
And in her magnificence touches my freedom
To make me walk when my very legs have crumbled
To make me compassionate when love itself has abandoned me

And I write when poetry and language themselves have been choked off
\

The Night

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

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

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

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

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

An Upanishad in Urdu

Siraj Aurangabadi & Akabar-ala-abadi


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

Translation by Muzaffar Ali:

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

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

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

(tahiyur-e-sihq = wonder of love)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translation of 1st three shair

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

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

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

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

Zaahid ne mera

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Ishq mein tere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ye Ishq ne dekh'a

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Psychology of Torture

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Circle

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

The incurable secular monkey!

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

The sobbing girl

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