An empty mind is God's workshop

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

Three Monks

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

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

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

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

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

Madhav : How impertinent!

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

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

Ignorance

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

Ink vapors

Who writes a poem on a printed page?

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

And let the ink vaporize into the blessed ether.

And the white paper fly way beyond all horizons.

ICE

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

Vibration and Effulgence

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

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

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

Q : Since when have you been meditating?

A : Right from my childhood.

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

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

Q : What was the trigger for this experience?

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

Q : Which mantram?

A: That’s hardly important.

Q : I would like to know.

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

Q : Did anybody initiate you into this mantram?

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

Q : What exactly did you perceive?

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

Q : Were you meditating specifically to hear this nada?

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

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

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

Q : What exactly was your experience?

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

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

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

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

A : There was no particular effect that night.

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

A : No.

Q : What did you do about that experience?

A : I told about it to my Guru.

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

A : No.

Q : What was his response?

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

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

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

Q : When did you start meditating?

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

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

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

Q: What did the sound current do to you?

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

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

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

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

A: 24 hrs a day.

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

A: No. I never did.

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

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

Q : Did you experience white effulgence then?

A : No, not white.

Q : When did you experience ‘white effulgence’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Is meditation a means for happiness?

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

Q: What then, is meditation?

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

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

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

Q: Is happiness a result of meditation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Model

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Abridged from 'Reality is Imagined.'

AUM consciousness - beyond the senses

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

Abridged from 'Reality is imagined'

Being beyond Attributes

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

The Waking Dream

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

My twin beloveds

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



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

Rejuvenate

Rejuvenate


3 Lakes

3 Valleys

3 Towns

3 Themes





Thematic Excursion















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
















Mystic Odyssey

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

















Soul Mountain


Discover yourself in the Himalayas









Lake of wisdom

Gift of Padmasambhava

An evening with Rinpoche, the precious master

At

Rewalsar

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



Get an insight into creating lasting changes.




Town of wisdom

Gift of the cow

Mandi

Get an insight into Indian archetypes

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

Touch the soul of India

Lake of Peril

Challenge of Pandavas

A morning with the five princes

At

Kunt Bhyog

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


Probe Crisis Management

Lake of tranquility

Joy of Parashar

An evening with the sage at

Parashar Lake

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


Abide in Joy

Learn the art of spontaneous living

Valley of Wisdom

Gift of the musk-deer

Barot

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


Get an insight into your hidden potential.

Town of Peril

Challenge of the unknown

Palampur

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

Open Johari Window

Enlighten your dark spots


Valley of peril

Challenge of the abyss

Andretta

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

Discover the light behind the eyes

Transcend your limits



Valley of Tranquility

Joy of Shiva

Bhagsu Nag

An evening with the lord

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

Get a holistic vision


Broaden your sphere of being

Town of Tranquility

Joy of Rigpa


McLeodGanj

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


See things as they are

Shed your conditioning

Radiance of Being

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

Together

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

Eternal Moment

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

For Priyanka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Symbology Of Vaishno Devi Legend

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

Reality is Imagined

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

The Eternal Path

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

The Pilgrimage

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

Summons From The Goddess

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

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

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