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.

Spaces

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

A Paper on Self!

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

REALITY IS NEVER EMPTY

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

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

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

Again,

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

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

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

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

Mystic Holi

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

Random lines

I dream of Lucifer

the prince of darkness

and the mirth of night

is revealed

the solitary rock

and the broken glass

I see my shadow

and weep

dry leaves fly in the dust

and hurricanes dream their death

Love for Form

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

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

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

The Truth

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

Sound and Light

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

Q: I want to know something about mysticism.

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

Q: How to go about it?

A: What do you do as a practice?

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

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

Q: How?

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

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

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

Q: Effulgence?

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Did you follow any method?

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

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

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

Q: Tell me something more?

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

Thanatos

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

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.