Love: The Privileged Guest

 

Love is a noble guest. It stays in a regal hall. You just cannot expect it to manage in a chaotic household. Before you invite the love guest to stay permanently, you have to put your house in order. But then we commit this folly of treating the title more important than the story. Want to know more about it? Read on.

There is a house well plastered, tiled and painted on the outside walls. Its well-designed, vibrant exterior catches your attention. Drawn by the catchy external look, you step inside. You expect the same magnetism inside. But a surprise awaits you. You come across soot, grime, dust, unplastered walls, cobwebs, cement and stone-crush staring at you. How do you feel now? Don’t be surprised if you feel cheated.

It’s a house that has been left unattended inside. Incomplete. You will feel running out. It’s a house that needs the workers more than the visitors. That’s how most of us die: just houses under construction. Throughout our lives we keep on painting the outer walls to satisfy our ego through expanding our visibility, hoping worldly attention will give happiness and peace. Little do we realize that real comfort lies in the house completed from inside. So the interior remains incomplete, disordered and under construction. Can such a house give permanent peace? No.

Outer walls are important but only to the extent of defining our world, a psychological boundary to stamp our ownership of our chunk in this world. Only this much. And the importance of the outer walls is meaningless if the interior is unfinished. Outer paint is just the title of the orderliness inside. It’s a summary of all the cozy arrangement inside. We, but, commit the folly of treating the title as the main story. Can a title replace the main text of the story? No. The title ought to be catchy. But the story is all that matters.

So guys let’s first put our house in order from inside. Magnificent positivity, the lovely bride of love and compassion, will naturally step in turning your house into a home, making you the kind and considerate person that you are meant to be.

Happiness: The Natural Fruit of Love

 

Happiness gets brewed fully to turn joy. But to love, essentially, and be loved, as a simple natural corollary, are the necessary ingredients. Love, joy and happiness then radiate from your soul and draw many a good circumstances in your life.

Here is a simple exercise to evaluate our options before we move on. When do you think your bigger loss occurred: when someone broke your trust and love or when you broke someone’s trust? Sadly, my book is only for people choosing the second option. Others can go to more practical guidebooks to seek their destiny.

The secret to happiness is unconditional love. Contrary to our experience, happiness is a matter of choice. I firmly believe that one can choose to be happy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Guys, unconditional happiness isn’t possible without unconditional love.

Since most of us are roaming the planet to look for something that is safe in our pocket, the discussion becomes relevant.

Myself, by the way, is someone who has taken the quieter by-lane to be happy. The hustle and bustle of the big, booming main street is intimidating with the added risk that I may well forget myself after being lost in the crowd. As you walk in the crowd, the monotony and anonymity takes over. You lose the charm of life in doing the same things others are doing. You don’t feel the kick in solving the same problems using the same old, oft-repeated methods. The solutions also are boringly the same, the results also the same.

A chronic boredom starts nagging the self. We try to fake being happy, forcefully trying to convince ourselves and others with our material achievements. But in our heart of hearts, we know that the happiness ever looks at the farthest end of the planet or even beyond. The long and winding chains of the preconditions to be met, before you trudge nearer to the ever-elusive happiness, are spooling on and on: the dangerous mathematics of infinitely long factors and functions of happiness.

I will be happy if I top the exams, then you become a topper, ok let me grab the best job, you get it, ok let me be the best CEO, you become one, then more. Then your children have to be the same or even more to take you to the still elusive dream of happiness. More money, more power, more prestige, more, more, more. Then there are others in the fray who can turn you unhappy even after you have overturned the records set out for yourself. There is no stopping. And hence no happiness. Forget about joy.

The problem is if your happiness is not within you from the beginning and lies at some goal-post in future at a distance, there are millions, trillions, zillions and even more open-ended factors that affect, mathematically scuttle your chances of a win. Forget it. It’s futile chase. The more we run after conditional happiness, the more we push it away from ourselves.

The fundamental mistake is that we expect happiness to be the fruit on the tree of our efforts, i.e., the result, the fructification. No, it simply isn’t. It is the root of the tree of our endeavors, where we begin from, which lasts from the beginning to the end. If it’s not in the beginning, forget it, it won’t appear later. It has to be there before you begin and persist while you are in the process, while you are in the journey. Learn to take the effort itself as a form of happiness. And simply doing becomes the cause of boundless joy.

The state of being happy can be habituated. Practice it as a daily routine, like you pump iron to tone your six and eight packs. Nurture the habit of just feeling happy, causeless and reasonless. Just smile when you are alone. Please try it and you will know what I mean. It lets loose a cascading effect driven by the hormones triggered by the movement of the muscles around the corner of your lips. Try it. Close your eyes and just smile. Unconditionally. You will feel how comforting it can be just to be happy.

The fruits will follow later as you slog it out in the battlefield. It’s a simple verb, being so, a simple act, a solacing function. We but treat it as an intimidating noun in future, interpolate it as success and achievements, the fruits at the end of the journey, the light at the end of the tunnel. It but is the lamp that is within you when you are in the dark.

The path to happiness can never pass through the stages of unhappiness and mental struggle. It’s the present in continuation. Remove all future components from the equation of your happiness. So passing through the quieter by-lane, not stomped and nudged by the teeming crowds, one can reach a solitary path, laid out just for himself/herself, to reach his/her destiny, to be happy primarily, and enjoy the fruits of being happy. All in all, you just practice the art of being happy unconditionally. And unconditional happiness is love personified.

If you have any doubts about losing the achiever’s tag, which sounds plausible in being on the main thoroughfare, kindly reevaluate your position. Being unhappy in the same way as others with loads of the same stuff like anyone around is no replacement for a liberated self seeking its own destiny on a free path leading to the ultimate freedom.

The Flower of Love in the Soil of Unity

 

A sense of unity opens the floodgates of loving nature. A sense of unison empowers you in untold ways. Love, peace, justice, equality, happiness and harmony are all the natural derivates in a system standing on the principle of unity.

The apparent diversity at the level of matter is just an illusion at the periphery. In reality, there is a unity of spirit, of life. There are ways and means of feeling this unity. The more you accept the principles of unity, the more the extreme, egoistic divisive forces take a backseat, allowing your spirit to chime with the cosmic harmony. All in all, it simply makes you a loving, kind, grateful and compassionate person. And mind you, given the way things are going around, it may not be possible at the level of organized religions to provide this feeling of unity to their respective followers. But unity in love is always possible. So go out there and spot how everything is unified in the larger scheme of things. 

Take clues from the open book of life lying around you. Look lovingly at the trees and plants nearby. Just because they don’t assert their importance in the language we are used to get messages, we have taken their availability and contribution to our life for guaranteed. But man and women, if the tree is cut, you too will suffer in your science-derived cocoon. If the garden around you burns, you too will feel the heat. Look at the larger stage, and you will realize, it’s merely one huge cosmic stage, where sneeze by one protagonist leaves upheavals in distant most corners. 

There is a system of goodness. The simplest code nature shows is of unified and interdependent co-existence. All things, phenomena, life processes and transformations give and take from the larger system. In simple terms, nothing can exist in isolation in this universe.

Our little environment is supported by earth, earth is supported by sun, sun by larger suns, they in turn by galaxies, and the latter by super-galaxies, and so on and so forth. There is absolutely no such thing as individualism in nature. It’s all a collective behemoth, ever expanding in more and more transformative ways. So how can our very own happiness come from our own limited self, concerning and defined by just our little fights and brawls in the arena of life?

Ask someone, whom you take as the epitome of material achievements, has he hit the biggest treasure of joy and happiness during his pursuits to get more and more power, prestige, money and material in his life? Just a little talk with someone who has spent decades on the path may clear your vision, helping you in reorienting your journey.

We just take fractions of happiness from the bigger pool. Happiness is never complete, or you can say just cannot happen, if it is confined to the limits of the individual self. There are happy families in happy societies and happy individuals in happy families. You simply cannot have happy individuals in an ant-swarm of unhappy society comprising unhappy families. And you cannot have a happy society surrounded by an unhappy ecosystem. You simply cannot.

If you think that the conveniences created science are the modes of happiness, then you are mistaken. These are mere utilities. Utilities are just contributors to happiness like countless other things. And generally these utilities come with far more intangible costs than we presume. You have cars, then you have pollution, and your lungs suffer, simply because trees are suffering. It’s just like everything and everybody is unhappy and suffering in a forest fire. In a flowery luxurious garden, on the other hand, everybody and everything is happy and peaceful.

We are happy or unhappy as a collective unit, not individually. Well, this is how it is, if you consider the real substantial meanings of peace and happiness. The rest are simply temporary delusions, nurtured under the mistake of taking some scientific conveniences as the destination of happiness, which they are not. They are simply the means of a tiny, temporary purpose in life.

So nurture this habit of connecting to the environment around you. The natural environment is the base of our struggle and sustenance. See the processes of life and learn the art of miraculous interdependence. And come out of this delusion that we humans can be happy and unhappy in isolation in our modern-day scientific cocoons.

Far above the debate between elixir of life and curse of death, creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence.

Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum.  Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

So guys sow the seeds of love in the soil of unity. It will be a rich crop. It makes the world beautiful and provides you strength and affability at the same time.

The Only Non-fatal Excess: Love

 

W.B. Yeats nails the truth: “All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”

Poison in small amount can be beneficial like nectar. And nectar in excess can be fatal like poison. We tend to jump from one extreme to another in our likes, dislikes, opinions and affiliations. And all excesses are stepping stones to pains, sufferings and alienation. There is only one thing in the universe that isn’t fatal in excess: love. This is the supreme leveler, the ultimate counter-point to all and sundry excesses and imbalances.

Alice Walker gives a very nice little exercise to get the magic potion flowing in your life: “‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.”

I would add, say ‘Thank you’ with a disarming smile. That completes the exercise. You may repent million and one words of yours but never ‘Thank you’. Try it. It’s a very potent bomb-defuser.

Dalai Lama: “Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.”

We hit the extremities and find ourselves struggling at the end of the pole. Irony is that all of us know with our practical knowledge that only a balanced central point can give us respite from shaking and the fear of falling over the edge.

In the Cosmic Mirage over there, we hardly have things positioned at one extreme. So leave your perch at the extreme, and surrender to the lure of the midway point. And mind you, love is the counterweight that can help you stay in the middle.

So guys, mix the contradictions. Churn out a paste. Blend the duality. Grind it well. And you get nothing in the so called ‘everything’. Is there any hard and fast line between the so called two ends of our perception? Is ‘black’ only ‘black’? Is ‘white’ only ‘white’? No. They seep into each other and relatively define each other, apparently though, not in reality. Black is less white, and white is less black.

Dark is not just ‘dark’. And light is not just ‘light’. Dark is only ‘less light’. And light is just ‘less dark’. Duality sustains on our sense of ‘ego’ driven by our perception-hungry senses. It turns our consciousness into self-consciousness, thus smartly laying the snare for a limited potential to grow and evolve.

Is there any pure, unadulterated ‘pleasure’? No. Pleasure is a state of having lesser pain. Pleasure has a mild dose of pain in it. Always! Find out a person who has no trace of pain in him. Is there any condition of just having ‘pain’? No. Pain is just having lesser degree of ‘pleasure’. Pleasure carries pain in it, and pain carries pleasure in it.

Our ego, our sense of ‘I’, stretches the point of reality in two directions for suitable dualities wherein things stand compartmentalized and defined almost as contradictions of each other.

Imagine the morning ‘twilight’ when the day’s rising light mixes with the night’s vanishing darkness. The balance! The melting of duality. Observing the phenomenon outside, we have to dispel the fog inside and see the sun of reality in its true avatar.

Is there any state of something being perfectly ‘cold’ or perfectly ‘hot’? No. Cold is just lesser hot. And hot is just lesser cold. The reality just gives the illusion of apparently getting stretched in opposite directions. It’s the see-saw battle. We look this way, then we turn to the other side. By subduing the element of ‘self’ from pure ‘consciousness’, one can get a balanced vision. Then the funny mirage of seeing two avatars of the same thing becomes invisible. And loving self becomes the most natural of an instinct.

If you want to swim, accept drowning. If you want to fly, accept falling. To win, accept loss. To fulfillment, accept emptiness. The duality is bound by almost an unbreakable cord, at least to a disillusioned self cowering under the weight of ego. Pull one, and the other one comes dragging. A win is not a win completely. You are losing something also, in some form or the other. No flight is a flight solely. It involves a fall also here and there. Swimming isn’t floating only. It involves intervals of drowning also. Accept the so called opposite, antipodal, the perceived enemy and the threat. Don’t run away from it. Success is not the absence of defeat. It’s only accepting defeat, learning further and moving on. Accept death and you live. Surrender the ego and you get to master the ownership of your thoughts, actions and emotions. You then control them instead of they deciding your fate.

The two versions of the same thing are inseparable, and are just our conveniently defined two points on the plain of reality. Death is not just death in itself. It is the beginning of life, of birth. Birth is not just birth. It is the beginning of death. Death starts the moment we take birth. After all it’s a process, not an event at the end of life.

Same is the case with the apparent duality of creation and destruction. They don’t exist separately. For an event and happening to occur, there has to be a balance between the two. Like human body survives on the principle of the balance between creation and destruction. New cells are continuously being created and old ones are dying. The circle. It holds the key to the mystery. Here is the end; here is the beginning.

The reality has loops of the so called dualities going side by side, at all points, in all directions, and in all events. The counterweights. The balance. Going on and on in loops. The ever-expanding universe and the ever-dying universe. In loops. In circles. At countless points. Forever. Explosions and implosions. Blasts and suction. Circular loops. Creation and destruction. Creation and destruction. On and on. In circles. Expansion and suction. Going from nowhere to everywhere and from everywhere to nowhere. And passing through the point where you happen to read it presently. 

Enjoy the moment. Take pleasure in the ride. It’s a whole thoroughfare out of nothing. From nothing to everything! Don’t feel puzzled over the fact that the net energy of the universe is zero. At the most take it as something synonymous to godliness. It’s a cosmic heartbeat, with the only difference on the so called time scale. Your heart beats once per second. The cosmic heart beats at the rate of billions of years. It expands, it implodes. Endlessly. So don’t get doubts about eternity. It’s possible. If a clock pendulum can maintain its swing, why cannot the cosmic cycle? When the pendulum is going to the right, it’s creating the potential to travel leftwards, and vice versa. When the universe is expanding, it’s creating the potential to implode. During implosion, it’s creating the potential to explode. Simple see-sawing with net zero energy! Isn’t it the greatest trick by the existential force!

And the seed, the focal point, of this mammoth mirage is love, compassion, harmony, rhythm and a never-ending melody. Love, along with its aforementioned derivatives, is the only thing whose excess never crosses the critical limits because it has to stay one step ahead of a mischance when everything may cease to exist thus stopping the mirage. Till it goes, love and harmony stay in the front, pulling the great show in its wake. Roll in the twilight grey of love where there is no light, no dark. But there is bliss definitely.

Universe: The Singular Song to Melt your Discordant Notes

 

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: “Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.”

Spread the self. Mix in the infinity. You will feel light, love and harmony pervading your cells. It’s simply like a drop of water feeling the unchained extents of a huge sea. You will catch the harmony. Einstein said that only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. Come, drop your guard, abandon the stupidity and look upwards into the mystical distances. You will realize the oneness. You will comprehend how inconsequential we are, merely specks of dust, and over-bloated with ego and ignorance. Open your heart to the profound vastness. You will get lessons in life and living.

It's such a colossal system, so forget about nurturing any ego to change things. Forget it. The only point in the universe where you can be sure of fixing things is yourself. Nothing out there was ever fixed by a mere part of the system. That is an absolute reality. But there is always light. The picture is incomplete without you. You change your perspective and the universe changes.

Joseph Campbell says: “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

Try this fabulous matching game. A drop of water is just a small ocean. The ocean is merely a larger drop. There is hardly any qualitative difference. They hold the same seed of potential. Similarly, you are a small cosmos. The cosmos is simply a larger you.

Stephen Hawking: "We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

And understanding the universe begins with understanding the small universe, i.e., you. The first step in the journey.

Look at your body and think, does it exist in abstraction, in exclusive totality. It doesn't. It simply cannot. It’s merely a few kilograms of matter clinging to consciousness, chetna. Just like electricity is the link between a computer’s hardware and software to make it an operating unit, similarly, prana energy is the link between the matter body and consciousness, the seat of your real being. You occupy the chair of your existence as a dynamic unit operating under the infallible laws of reciprocal transformations of energy.

You are just the karmic point, the soul DNA, having the code of your journey across other transformations, which we term for simplicity as the ‘previous births’. Just like semen and egg cells have the DNA imprint for the matter body, your consciousness has the DNA coded with all your experiences since the journey began. And this journey is just a journey within the largest, singular journey, the expansion of the present universe since the Big Bang in its current cycle.   

This ecosystem, which supports you and countless other beings, is your extended body. You are just a point of existence within this larger body. These trees over there are your bigger lungs. These streams of water are the larger replica of the water in your body. Calcium, phosphorus, zinc and other elements of your body are just the tiny replica of the vast mountains and plains containing mammoth amount of this matter. You retain your identity in this sea of ecosystem like a drop of water does in an ocean. It exists simply because the larger entity exists to define its existence. 

Moving up the hierarchy, this ecosystem also has an extended body. It is mother earth itself. Earth with dense metal in its core, its gravity, its spin and revolution, sets up the stage for the ecosystem to exist.

Further up, the solar system is earth's extended body. Earth cannot exist in exclusion from the solar system. Without it, it will just vanish like a tiny speck of dust and scatter its energy to be taken up by some mysterious, concurrent phenomena, God knows in what incidental, interesting way.

The Milky Way is the solar system's extended self. The solar system will collapse without the vast surrounding and balancing forces of the Milky Way. It’s just a tiny phenomenon cocooned in the huge galactic forces of matter and energy transformations prevalent in the Milky Way.

Super-galaxy is Milky Way's extended body, and so on so forth. Till you arrive at the roof of everything. Till you reach the farthest expansion of the universe. Then it’s nothing, simply because there the explosion is imploding, getting sucked into nothingness, only to be blasted out again for another cycle. And the cycle goes on and one. Self-sustaining with zero net energy! Doesn’t eternity sound plausible this way?

Mind you, all this endless play is being played on the mathematical sum of zero energy. How is it possible with net zero energy? Visualize a pendulum. It swings left and right simply because of the energy transformations taking from kinetic energy to potential one and vice versa. When it’s moving up, its kinetic energy is turning to potential energy. When it’s going down its potential energy is turning to kinetic energy. So much of drama without any loss or gain of energy! Just simple transformation of energy from one form to another! Same is the case with this cosmic pendulum. At its two extremes it explodes and implodes, expands and gets sucked up, and on and on, just like a cosmic swing, moving on and on.  

Now, can you guess, what is the meaning of ‘universe’? It is ‘one song’. If you still didn't get it, no need to waste time, carry on like before, but don't forget to smile and have fun. This is just one harmonious, ever-evolving song to which you can definitely add your melody and composition by being in tune with the natural laws. There is no specific need to understand it. It can be very easily lived. 

Closely watch nature. You will see the miracles happening with such magical effortlessness that they appear more mundane than even the simple task of you lifting your hand. And one more thing, like you see around, it's nothing but dynamic exchange and transformation of energy and matter. In any case, it’s basically energy, because matter, and its consequent shape and appearance, is just the apparent state of energy at a particular frequency.

Your own purpose in life always falls short of the universal will unless you link it to the causes beyond your own self. So while you strive to be happy and successful, try to do it in a way that it gets in sweet concordance with the very same desires of not just human beings but whole of the ecosystem.

Even a genuine prayer for someone will do. Enlightenment doesn't mean skies will shower flowers and earth will part and you will get a halo around your head. It happens when you become the commonest of the common and see yourself in the natural scheme around, as a part of the totality surrounding you. It simply means to be in a state when you accept in all humility that there is hardly any individuality around, when you feel that it’s all but a massive commonalty.

One seed contains the potential of a whole forest. The cosmic seed, the point, the bindu of Hinduism, is just the dot where explosion and implosion begin and end. At the highest hierarchy, this seed, this point, this vector of nothingness, contains limitless possibilities for the mutually interchanging interplays of energy. Look at the marvel of a tiny banyan seed. Look at the wonderful sprout of a huge tree with the lateral openings for birds, animals and humans. The cosmic seed, the point of nothingness, contains the seeds for everything. Quite stupendously, it’s nothing and everything at the same time. 

These little groups of words in this tiny sermon just try to take a picture of the infinite and its day-to-day reflection in our lives. It’s just a poor substitute for the ultimate reality. Just like a picture taken on your camera is a poor replacement for the lively panorama you wish to capture. With due regard to human limitations to express the infinite dimensions of reality, all our efforts through words, art and science are merely indicative in nature. They simply point to the largest reality far above the smaller planes of human-contrived tiny realities that make life easy, comfortable and somewhat comprehendible.

There is hardly any difference between ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’. This cosmic cycle, having a time-span of billions of years, is a blast from a point. The net energy is zero. You can have an endless interplay of energy, with nullifying factors at each step, like you go on adding and subtracting the same amount at all levels. Eternity then becomes possible. It’s possible to have ‘everything’ out of ‘nothing’. The so called Maya of Hinduism is nothing but the apparent reality, which involves the subject and the object. In quantum physics, they say that for the subatomic phenomena to exist, it’s necessary to have a perceiver. No wonder, they say that the world is as you see it.

Radiation is both wave and particle at the same time. How is it possible? It is a wave because it shows the properties of a wave like refraction. It’s particle because it can strike like a particle and get bounced off? Contradictions melt in probability. And that probability is never complete till you have the observer to define it.

Electromagnetic radiation, the wave, has particles called photons. These photons have zero mass. Then how can these be particles? They are particles through the probability to exist at a point within a specified zone in the wave path. The probability of their existence remains dormant until you have an observer. They are a wave without an observer, and turn to particle status the moment the observer arrives on the scene to define a moment of existence at a particular point in the band of probability. Scriptures say that all this is an extension of your mind. The latest researches in quantum physics prove the same thing.  

Explore your own space within the infinitely dynamic exchange of energy in the singular stream of primordial energy shooting off in countless directions, carrying fixed laws and supported by infallible universal intelligence. And all this is defined by the last law of all the lesser laws, the ultimate law. Call it God, supreme intelligence or the ultimate being. All this but is the same thing. Its reflection in our day to day life is through a feeling called love.

Ego: The Dark Dungeon of Self-imprisonment

 

People oftentimes mistake their insecurities, lust, possessiveness and ego as love. You look for perfection, as per your expectations, in your relationships. It blocks your vision. You then look sideways to blame the externals around you. You shout at people, call them names and blame them for your discomforting situation in life.

Ego is an illusion that creates a false identity preventing you from coming face to face with the real self. And from the false chambers you cannot be a loving person. You have to nail down the culprit. You have to be vigilant. You have to observe it closely. Mere observation will help you come out of its trap. The moment you come out of the dark room of ego, humility, modesty and respect for others will sprout forth. And that is where the sun called love dazzles with its life-transforming warmth. 

Now let us come down to the funny game of breaking the walls that don't even exist. A very small and practical key that can unlock and set the love code free to sparkle in your life.

Let’s start with the body. It’s not a wall, this body, separating the world outside that our illusionary ego, the sense of ‘I’ makes us believe, exclusively separating the self from the other. The stronger the feeling, the bigger is the illusion. And, as a direct result, lesser is the scope of love and compassion to blossom.

There are no separating walls. They appear so on account of the conditioned mind and the limited perceptions, thanks to our sense organs that interpret the fragmented parts perceivable to them in the forms of touch, taste, feelings, appearances and shapes at certain frequencies. The latter are nothing but concentrations of energies at particular frequencies. Otherwise, it is the same cosmic energy, vibrating, evolving, transforming in endless chains. It’s nothing but an ever-existing evolution, with balancing counterpoints all along the way. The apparent creation and destruction, the dualities, are nothing but the balancing acts as the cosmic design unfolds. You can compare it to a pole-wielding rope-walker. The movement is onwards, but at each step the pole sways between the dualities to manage the balance and ensure the movement ahead.

So let’s start with the cemented identities of the separation of the self from the big scheme out there. At least accept that there are windows in the wall. Accept that it’s not an unbreakable stone wall around your flesh and bones. Open the windows and let the light flood in. By taking windows as walls, we just keep on piling a crust of illusions around our apparently exclusive self. Then it becomes a fortress, created and cemented solidly by the mind. A dark, sooty psychological crust around the self. It’s a narrow, confined world of insecurities, jealousy, self-centeredness, hate and complexes. The things that should hardly matter become life-defining parameters. Under the tar of illusions, our real self, our real potential, our gateway to success, plus peace, lies dormant in the dark.

The crust becomes too hard. But its brittleness increases with its thickness with the passage of time, as our age and experience tell us later. It is bound to crack. And when it does, we feel the pain. Our assumptions of happiness and success turn out to be flimsy and childish. It seems we just ran after a mirage. No wonder we die in pain and agony.

So guys start hammering down the crust. Practice opening the windows in the illusionary wall. Let the light pour in. It’s there, everywhere, the real you, with your potential of greatness and peace. As much as you pursue dreams in a competing world, return home to your real self in the evening for rest and repose. That is your root, the real origin. Nourish it. Leaves, branches and trunk are important. But these are the manifestations of the potential of your roots that lie there in the soil of unity and totality of one universal energy going on and on in countless transformations, following the same laws in different transformations at each stage. So nourish your roots to the real self. The branches will be sturdy, the leaves healthy and shiny. And the biggest reward, the best takeaway, falls in your basket. It’s the fruit of love. It’s the certificate of self-authentication. It’s the degree of coming home to realize your essential loving nature.

Go and embrace the tree near you. It is the same energy, utilizing the five primal matters like yours, manifesting its tree form at a slightly different frequency than yours.

As Victor Hugo says, “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”

To have a taste of the ultimate sweetness, you have to come out of the self-imposed prison. If you have become too habituated to target enemies, if that is what fuels your journey to achieve targets, then target your own ego first. The biggest enemy is nearest, within your own self. Come on, first at least acknowledge its presence. Observe its tricks objectively. You will soon realize the hollow foundations of this phantom palace.

Cracking the Code of Love

 Dalai Lama: “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”

The fundamental structure of the seed of our being, our soul, is unconditional love. It stays deep at the core of our consciousness. It may not be tangible as a vigorous emotion. It is simply a state of being the way it is.

Ram Dass sums it up so beautifully: “It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object.”

Quite ironically, we tend to oversee love and find it easy to hate. Little do we realize that the things we love are kept in our heart. The baggage of hate is carried by the mind. An empty heart and a laden mind is a sure shot recipe of frustrated self.

Come, let us explore the code of love. In the game of survival and sustenance, there is an underlying code of love, compassion and consideration. All the apparent turbulence on the stage of life is simply like waves on sea surface. Inside you have undisturbed depths. Try to read this subsurface code of love in things, phenomena, relationships and all other worldly scenarios as life chugs ahead.

Loveless Souls: Biggest Losers

 

Kinky Friedman: “Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”

Doesn’t he crack open the little secret, which perhaps lies too much in abundance for us to give it almost no value like dirt around our feet?

The farther we exist on the periphery from the central core of our being, the more we get identified with rampant ambition and its instrument, power.

Abraham Lincoln says, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

Try it on someone who appears a replica of goodness and a cute bundle of niceties. Many times we make our fears, weakness and insecurities pass off as beacons of morality. Give power to one such guy and test. As Plato says, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

The urge to dominate, the ambition of power and the desire for prestige, these are all driven not by strength, but by some inherent weakness, fragility, fear and imperfection. There is an inherent imperfection that drives grossly selfish acts.

As Eckhart Tolle says, “Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”

Stalin had very short legs in comparison to his upper body. When he sat on a chair, he looked damn funny as his legs fell short of the ground. We need not insult humanity anymore by even retelling the atrocities he perpetrated on his own people.

Changez Khan won half of the world and slaughtered countless innocent human beings. He was so insecure of his death and mortality that he went on rampage to forcibly plant his biological seed across Asia. By an estimate, almost 6% of the Mongoloid people draw their genetic line from him. But even this large scale cropping won’t give him peace and security. He was so scared of his death that fearing some sabotage he never slept at nights. He just went paranoid and one night ran out of his tent, tripped, fell on an iron peg and died like a stray dog dies accidentally.

You can add Hitler to the list. About him we need not say even a single word because speaking about the evil sounds like becoming evil itself.

I have no reason to feel that these characters were happy, content souls. Such violence and hate can only pour out of burning innards. The fire burns forever with the dry fodder of self-hate and self-reproach. The soul burns in it. Those around simply feel the heat. Pity for such poor idiots. Contrary to what they strove to project outside in the form of power and fear, they were the weakest of human beings inside. And their efforts to cover up that weakness took the world into whirlpools hellish tragedies. These were the souls who had basically got totally detached from their essentially loving soul, the biggest tragedy for a human self, and the biggest punishment also in surviving as living ghosts. These are glaring exceptions where these people completely lost their essentially loving self. Feeling sad for the biggest losers.  

They exist with only this much of lesson for humanity: How far one can fall if one’s soul loses whole of its essential self, i.e., love. One then becomes a devil incarnation. Even the smallest amount of love in a human being saves him/her from hitting the nadir of existence, i.e., becoming Satan itself.

So guys, hold your love in your heart with pride. And look up to Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and scores of other soldiers of love and peace. Look at the dark characters in history only with this much of a gentle reminder about hate and its destructive capacity because all of us have the virus ever-ready to attack our loving self.

Simply keep on observing your anger, hate and irritation. Watch it as a spectator like you observe the world outside. This much awareness itself will enable you to be in a position to take charge of your affairs as things start getting out of control. The agents of hate and malice strike you in total unawareness. Light the lamp of your awareness and you see the shadows creeping away.     

Graduate from Valentine Day to Earth Day

 

Lewis Black: “What I find most disturbing about Valentine's Day is, look, I get that you have to have a holiday of love, but in the height of flu season, it makes no sense.”

Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me either, especially when I get sadly comparative about the enthusiasm between Earth Day and Valentine day.

I sadly brood over the massive collective losses. It’s Earth Day, passing off like any other inconsequential day. On the other hand, Valentine Day makes a far bigger noise and catches attention. Media is full of it. People themselves are so eager to celebrate it. Well, nothing wrong with that. Symbolism of love and affection in relationships has its utility and importance. But it also shows how confined and limited, almost self-seeking, is our interpretation of love and care. Mind you, it might even be merely skin deep, shallow and funny. Most of us realize it very soon, by the way, in any case.

The best part of being human—our beautiful emotions and the awareness of good and bad—has been imprisoned so tightly that we just trample ahead with our tiny, boxed up, suffocating emotions, totally unconcerned about what is getting trampled under our feet.

We carry tremendous insecurity. Every fellow human is a competitor and rival to beat. No wonder the things that really matter, the issues that are make or break for all of us, the great common ground, hardly get attention. So the plight of mother earth is not that big an issue. It’s the nightmare that we simply delegate to the future generations to face and suffer about. If as parents we sacrifice our present to make our children’s future, cannot we just take a few more steps to be bothered about the future a few generations down the line?

There is a rat race of domination among all countries. There are elaborate geo-strategic plans to capture future for themselves. Plunder of natural resources, development of weapons of mass destruction, genocides, communal killings, and scores of the evils of modernity, where does it take us all. Mankind is certainly the most aware species on earth, but the most foolish as well. Of course foolish because what else it is to keep moving in a direction where, in complete knowledge of it happening, there will be fire and destruction. It’s as foolish as setting the house on fire, and getting full throttle creative about setting a luxurious bed for a night-long rest.

So the biggest stage—mother earth—is shaking and creaking under the hooves of the prudent-most animal on earth. What value the victory carries if the place you have fought for is bound to be crumbled to pieces in future? What does a luxurious bed stand for if the house itself will burn? Hope the earthlings realize that the biggest reason for them to feel insecure is for mother earth itself. Other levels of insecurities, and the consequent strife, confrontations and wars, come later. Even the fights of ego need a solid stage. What does victory mean on a dying planet?

Suppose the aliens approach us. And they will definitely some day or other. It’s just a matter of time. It’s creditable to believe that there are intelligent forms of life in the universe around. So once they arrive, won’t we be simply earthlings in the face of a common threat? Then these caste, class, communal and national divides will melt. It’s high time we realize that the great commonality that supports and sustains us, Mother Nature, is under threat.

There is a common enemy, environmental degradation, the result of our rampant plunder and greed, the evil spin off of our self-seeking bad habit. Let it be recognized as such and a fight launched against it. Let it be done before it is too late. Because the cycle of destruction, once it crosses the critical limit, becomes irreversible.

Save earth! Celebrate Earth Day with as much fervor as you celebrate Valentine day! Take your love a degree further by graduating your embrace for your lover to include some tree nearby. At least try to plant a tree, with due follow up during its growth phase of course, on Earth Day. Throw a bash for your partner. That will bring laughter around. Give mother earth one more soldier, a tree, to fight the poisonous fruits of our misdeeds. It will bring a smile to you.

These are simple exercises to help you evolve from the narrowly defined, relationship-squeezed definition of love, to reach the higher trajectory where unfathomable bliss awaits you.

Lamp of Love under the Nazi Shadows

 

There is crime and there is punishment. The crime, full stop. A lethal abstract. It cannot be reversed. It's a criminal act spinning out of hate, lust and greed, and all the wrong colors of the soul. Punishment cannot right the wrong. There is hardly any redemption. Punishment is a poor instrument of deterrence, and most often it fails even in that.

Going above the man-made instruments of punishments, we have the divine system of justice. For crimes, where the man-made system of justice fails to deliver redemption, we expect the divinity to set it right. But what of mass crimes? What of Nazi Holocausts, communist purgings, and religious, ethnic and racial genocides? The equation of right and wrong loses its meaning. These are the black holes. They suck any semblance of justice. It spins in its own gory world of hate and blood. No light of justice escapes. It's just a dark monolith, a crime. A massive wrong.

Forget about mankind's justice, even the wildest stretch of faith in divine redemption fails to get even an iota of justice. Does it mean that the mass crime stands unredeemed? Forever. Does it just keep casting its shadows over the present, creeping into the future, almost forever? Just hopelessly waiting to be redeemed. And forgotten finally. Or forgiven more suitably.

There seems to be no answer. But there is a possibility of a full stop. Love and forgiveness. It leaves the whole equation redundant. It nullifies the vectors of hate that were otherwise casting their shadows till eternity. Well, only till there arrives the ultimate checkmate: Forgiveness. And forgiveness comes only from a loving heart.

Take some time to read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. To me it sounds like a song of humanity amidst mass crime. A ray of hope for the lost. Redemption for the innocent millions who were wiped out because they attracted the greatest affliction of the human mind, someone's unchecked hate. A tale of a small lamp of love under the furious winds of hate and lust for power in Nazi occupied France during the Second World War.

France is virtually menless. Almost all the men are in prison. The women hold the baton of life. They have to keep love alive in their wombs. It's loss and loss everywhere. And monstrous brutalities. They have to hide fistful of love, humanity and forgiveness deep inside their tortured selves. It will be required to rebuild life after the devastation. All major destruction is caused by the criminal acts of men. It's for the women to pick up the scattered pieces and again make a home for the men, for a husband, for parents, for children, for brother, for sister, for everybody in fact. These deeds stand out as a eulogy for womanhood. Beyond blood and death, you see the sun of love rising.

It's a dark cloud hanging over, taking their smiles away. They are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers. But only in memory. The males who define them as such are missing. They have to survive alone. When they can no longer fight to save their bodies, they fight to save their souls. For future. For the victory of humanity over monstrosity. For their men. To give them fresh lease of life, food, shelter and the strong love of a woman, if at all they return after the war.

Forget about redemption. The survival of love in a woman's heart for her man, despite all the wrongs to her body in his absence, is far better a right than millions of wrongs committed by criminal souls. It is here that the question of redemption becomes irrelevant. Like a small lamp drives away millions of particles of darkness with its tiny flicker, the women of France keep the torch alive. They hold the beacon of hope, of love, of a possibility to restart life in the times to come. They keep their treasure of love bound by an urge to relive the moments that sound farther than the wildest dreams. In the backdrop of Nazi holocausts, they move silently, unheroically, carrying love in their eyes, hopes in their laps and seeds of humanity in their womb. Such stories help us in being a still better human being, a more loving person.

Such stories reaffirm the power of love. They teach the lesson of love and rejuvenation. Read more of such stories for they help us in recalling the true nature of our essentially loving self. They reinvigorate the feeling of love. 

William Shakespeare: “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

Well, the great bard has no doubts about love. Lesser mortals like you, me and anyone around are safe in following Shakespearean belief.

Let the Festivities Seep in

 

Don't shy away from festivals. Music festivals, color festivals, light festivals, and various other religious and cultural festivals are the highway inns along the great path that life is. These are the pools for everyone to dive in: a big collective exercise to share the same emotion. Festivals provide an opportunity when your oppressed self can go for a revolution against the stress and frustrations of life. Real celebration of a festival may be the stepping stone to enjoy life itself as a festival.

Take Holi, for example. Basically a celebration of colors. Nothing symbolizes colors more than love. So if you want to move beyond the celebrations literally, take one more step towards celebrating it in spirit. Sprinkle the colors on your spirit. Waddle in the colors of love, care, kindness, sympathy, empathy, compassion, forgiveness and understanding. A human soul needs these colors as much as our skins pine for gulal on Holi. Involve your soul in celebrations also. Drive out the black color of hate and douse yourself with the vibrant colors of humanity and tolerance.

It may take some effort to better your worldly conditions, your profession, your job and your business. But it is really simple and easy to turn for the better as a human being. It doesn’t carry any extra cost. It comes free. It doesn’t even need time and drill of humungous effort. Just aim the pichkari at your soul. Let out a spurt of colors. Only this much. Job is done. It will drive out the shades of dark and gray.

Smile more. Smile over someone’s luck even if you are still waiting for your own. It will arrive shortly, changing your little smile to a huge laughter. Forgive your enemies. Look at them with a smile. They will be shamefaced of their dark thoughts about you. Feel happy just to be alive and healthy. The problems of life will seem just routine investments of effort only as much as you invest in climbing a flight of stairs.

Religious hatred has killed more people than the number of souls who have received real peace from religion. Religious divides keep on killing humans like in medieval times. So where is the advancement? The only way left out for humanity is inter-religious harmony. Festivals are the bridges. Abandon your hate and allow the colors to reach the other side as well. Put the festivals out of the barricade. Let the fun and joy be for everybody.

During Mughal period, Muslim emperors and courtiers sprinkled abeer and gulal from ornate balconies. It fell on the people of all faiths. Colored waters of tesu flowers sprinkled the spring-time festivity on the mundane clothes of a common humanity. It was Holi as well as Gulabi Eid. Festivities merged. Looking at the present iron-curtain divides, I wonder, “Have we regressed in our spirits with the passage of time?”

 Wishing everybody a very happy Holi! When you take a bath after the celebrations, please ensure you retain the colors of a better human being on your spirit. 

Same is for Diwali. Let the light starting from the tiny lamps reach into your inner being. Let your soul be a brightly lit grand hall of love, harmony, balance, equipoise, kindness and smiles.

And let it be so for all other festivals of all religions, castes and creeds. These are nothing but celebrations of the biggest truth about human beings, loving self. They just send a gentle reminder.

Aesthetics and Nostalgia: A Step towards Loving Self

 

"But how deeply, painfully, irreparably had he wounded her and upset her life, and how restless and violent she was in her determination to re-shape her destiny and start afresh!" ___Boris Pasternak in Dr Zhivago

 As I reread this quote I smell the beauty of truth and love. An old book having eternal flame of truth. The smell is mildly pungent, of tobacco and paper soaked in the spirits of literature. Classics are classics. As I douse my hunger down the pages, a surprise awaits. A huge bonus that makes my day and turns me richer. A surprise gift. The story ends to live in your memory. But then there is a beginning once more. There are 43 pages of poetry, taking the last page of the book to dreamy depths, to last forever. That's how Boris Pasternak surprises and gives a bonus to his humble reader in Dr Zhivago. 

The most profoundly charming things are not about money, power and authority. They are about sweet memories. Create such moments. These may come in a book, in a movie, or anywhere on the broad stage of life. These are the ripe fruits for you. Pluck them. You won't be disappointed.

Even in the darkest phase of life, these little lamps can show you the path. Keep your store of such cozy moments well stacked. They make a very comfortable lounge chair when you are weak, debilitated and feeling low.

Life's grand events, even if they are very paying otherwise, are still noisy and don't give the comfort that a tiny sip of a pleasant memory can give you. Don't just take huge swigs, take little-little sips of solace on offer. Life's real worth is measured by such small sinews.

Your fabric of happiness is spun with the threads of such pleasing moments. As you run on the stage of life, don't miss to pick up these pleasantries and weave your carpet of happiness. It is possible. Nostalgia draws out such brief, suave moments, not huge episodes and gala events of life. Just reflect, even most extraordinary events will not give that soft balmy touch as will a tiny episode of love, care and gratitude. If you don't have the heart to spot beauty in the ordinary, no decked up specialness will be sufficient to make your heart go ga ga. As Rose Kennedy says, “Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.”

Orson Welles: “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Well, the golden aesthetics of love and friendliness are the anchor support for our soul as the external self gets tossed in the treacherous bay. The sepia-toned nostalgia of such tiny episodes prepares you to be pleasantly surprised and innocently overawed by the smallest of a thing. It strengthens the basic unit of your being. You don’t lose your footing when you come face to face against the mammoth structures of life. It may sound surprising, but that’s how it operates. A tiny miracle! Enjoy it!

Rise in Love

 

"The trouble with falling in love is that, unlike death, love kills you every moment, robbing you, at first, of reason, and then, slowly, consuming you bit by bit until you lose the sense of time, of the true nature of things, and of all other precious relationships."_Siddhartha Gigoo in Mehr: A love story.

No wonder they say one ‘falls’ in love!

Well, one falls when the offshoots overweigh the supporting roots. You definitely fall when you impose your desires, expectations, fears and insecurities over the object of your love, covering it like a parasitic vine.

Life, dear brothers and sisters, is a well-cooked love recipe. And no conjecture please about me ‘falling’...haa haa... My version of love is ‘rising’. There is abundance of love around, of family, nature, birds, animals, flowers, clouds, honeybees, insects, beetles, crowded bazaars, isolated vales, springs, summers, winters, autumn, everything in fact. If you have the eyes for it, everything is saturated with love like luscious honey oozing from fat honeycombs hanging over wild rose thickets and the nectar dripping. And the honeybees tasting their own fruits as they buzz around collecting pollen from the flowers! Isn’t it dreamy and wonderful?  

When hate vanishes, love blooms and you ‘soar high’ with such love instead of ‘falling’. You love all, simply because you don't hate anyone. You don’t have any enemies because you are friendly to all. If you have only love to offer, you just cannot have hate around you. The hatred that we see in our lives is just the multiplication of the traces of discontent in us. We simply project it over others, coming out clean chit after blaming them for being the cause of it. Mind it, we just make them the screens to project our inner disharmony. The moment we realize it, more than half the battle is already won.

So kill the agents of hate and anger inside you, and as a natural consequence their visible manifestations in your life get killed from around you. You see light around, simply because there is no darkness inside anymore. You smile more, simply because a smiling face still contributes to the struggles of even a stranger coming across the street.

Rumi: “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” 

No wonder, infinite possibilities to rise await you. Come on, take the first step!

Love for a man or woman is the first step in the ladder. Fall in love with your man or woman, and go all the way in pursuit of your passionate craving. Melt in it like butter in the frying pan. Lose your identity, break the walls and surrender your self-driven cart to the free wheels of airy jaunts. This is the fire that melts the outermost stony ramparts that hinder you from the freest flight. No wonder, to rise you have to fall first. It’s the rebound that shapes your destiny. All natural laws say so. Your rebound is just in proportion to your ‘fall’ for your man or woman.

Only after touching one summit, you feel like going for the other. So give all you can in your love for your man or woman. Touch your peak. There is no chance for half-bakes. Cook it full. Boil it well. Lukewarm things keep you in a vague haze. Bake it full. Boil it. Vaporize with the heat of your passion. Then you feel like soaring high, instead of crawling piteously in the cauldron.

But don't just stop at this point. It's just a beginning. It’s the path to a bigger destination: from particular to the universal. With your categorized love for your partner, or for your family, friends and siblings, you get a glimpse of the bigger possibilities. The limited love, the so called love defined by your relations, is simply a window to help you have a glimpse of the infinite potential of bliss, the universal love.

Do you know, why do you feel like ‘falling’ in love again and again? It’s simply because you don’t ‘fall’ completely. You go with insecurities and fear. You love your man and woman with lots of apprehensions, fears and insecurities. You are partially into it. No wonder, the delicacy of your affair is always under-cooked. And you always feel dissatisfied, craving for more and more. Then you proceed to cook another half-cooked affair. We rarely complete the recipe. It’s my promise, if you cook one relationship well, you will not be left with any appetite to run for more along the avenue.

So guys keep falling in love. But just falling forever doesn't define you as a human being. Rising will. And rising occurs when you start loving all, when you use your full potential to be a loving being. And the path to hitting the full potential starts with your full love for your partner without any roadblocks of fear, insecurity and apprehensions. The destination of love is to be all inclusive. Your love relationship with the man or woman in your life is simply an apprenticeship to help you become an all-loving person. So keep falling, but learn to rise and love all.

As you enjoy the ecstatic grip of the love chains of your partner, slowly learn to wipe away the names of the people you hate from your little black book. Take a sip of love from the petals of your partner and forget and forgive one name at a time. The honey of love should be sweet enough to make you forget all the bitter tastes driven in your memory at the mention of certain irritating names in your life.  If your life’s bitterness isn’t swiped away by the sweet cherry of your love bites, then you have to objectively assess your level of dive in the love pool. If you are sufficiently deep in the pool of love for your man and woman, you won’t have any reason to be hateful towards even the worst people who have hurt you.

So here I rise high and see all people good in their unique ways.

Love you all!