A canine love triangle

 

This is a solitary trail running between the canals. It’s the last hideout for me and the wilderness in the area. I follow the solitary trail in the evenings. I go up and down the narrow path—a nice exercise of going with the flow and against the stream (psychological aspect only)—as the sun’s red ball dives into the silvery pools over the horizon. A cold night builds up, taking everything into its dark folds. But I see more clearly—the light inside, giving more awareness within the self. Little prinias have retired in their tiny grass homes among the tall pampas grass on both sides. Now and then there is a rustle.

I meet many dogs on the way. There are some fish ponds, poultry farms and mushroom farms on both sides. I reckon there are thirty to forty stray dogs in the area. They take up this solitary trail to cross over to this or the other side of the canals. The more cautious ones use a three feet footbridge over one of the canals. The adventurous types have their fording points across the canals. There is a big iron water pipe passing over one of the canals, half of it submerged under the water and the other half above it to serve as a nice little bridge for the canines or even the farmers in case they need to cross over to the other side. You just have to walk cautiously to safely cross over.

One day I’m walking on the trail near this pipeline. I meet a black dog with two of her male friends resting on the silt by the footpath. The canine lady and one of the males (a tabby black and white one) got up and easily walked to the other side over the pipeline as they see me approaching. The third dog, a dark brown male, is not confident of walking over the curvy little bridge. It stands on the buttress and sniffs at the iron, tentatively takes its paw forward but then withdraws it. It’s hesitant and walks to the little footbridge over the other canal. But this safe option would take it in the opposite direction of its love interest. It stands in the middle of the tiny bridge and growls at me as I pass, as if accusing me of spoiling its date.

Cross over the safe bridge to the safe shore, dog, if your fears drive you away from the call of your heart. But this safe option will take you to the other side of your interests and desires. After accusing me for its own fears, it again comes back to the pipeline as I have crossed the point by this time. I stand at a safe distance to avoid being a culprit for the canine fears. There it stands in a critical dilemma whether to cross over the pipeline or not. The love-struck pair on the other side is frolicking among the bushes. Jilted and jealous it whines in frustration. Little does it realize that its own fears are responsible for its frustrating situation. It’s afraid of a fall in the water from the pipe, a fall of mere 1.5 foot because the pipeline is half submerged in the water. Fall is its phobia. So it takes a safer option—it jumps into the water and swims to safety, all drenched up and shivering.

The moral of the story is that by surrendering to your imaginary fears, you forfeit your right to the entire set of possibilities. You already accept the worst thing that would have befallen you, a mere fraction of the possibilities, as you allow yourself to be cut to your minimum by the imaginary fears. What would have happened—at the most—if it had decided to walk over the pipeline? At the worst it would have fallen and get wet but still would have crossed over. But there was a big chance that it would have crossed over without wetting its fur, all dry and in high spirits. But by this time the other two already looked like a cupid-struck pair. Females hardly care about cowards. The moment when it struggled to the point where they were playing, both of them easily walked over to the former side. Now it’s standing at the opposite buttress, undecided whether to walk over or swim. It has already forgotten that it’s all wet and is now entitled to go all fearless. But our imaginary fears rarely leave us with enough sense—common sense I mean.    

A rainbow of energies

 

Recently mild earthquake tremors were felt in the Delhi NCR. It was afternoon and I was lying on the bed for some siesta. My body responded to the tremors in an unusual way. All our experiences are meant to help us redraw some more lines on the infinite canvas for understanding a bit more of the reality that we create with our sense perception. This experience also opened the niche a bit further to help me peek into the subsurface base of phenomena and understand the portion of 'me-specific' reality.  

The tremors that we inherit in our body, emotions and thoughts are simply a reflection of the energetic ripples whirring around, an invisible world beyond the apparent solid state of the matter. The nanoparticles whizz past almost without any obstruction. That's the quantum reality we have understood so far in purely scientific terms. A free-wheeling neutrino would simply pass through a boulder of stone, making its way across the vast spaces between the stone’s atoms, as if it’s moving through the most porous of a medium. The same happens to our bodies; just that we need to feel the waves cutting across us pleasantly with heightened awareness. They say primordial sound of 'Aum' is the combined sonic effect of all this non-stop energetic chatter. But before that a sadhak would hear different categories of sounds at various stages of opening the self to the overall embrace of the infinite grace.

There is a very simple meditation technique of aligning our own grouping of atoms, which defines our sense of we being as such, with the harmony and balance outside. Open yourself to the vast expanses of the starry vault at night. Stand in seclusion under the open night sky. Close your eyes, take a few gentle breaths and unlock the gate of your insecurities. Then allow your body to move of its own. It’s a very subtle, thin line between voluntarity and involuntarity or conscious effort and automated movements. Just like a self-start in your vehicle, you give an initial voluntary push with the key, and then leave it on auto-pilot. It will roll of its own. Allow your body to move around in any way it wants. It knows better about the best ways to twist and turn in order to uncoil itself from the stress that we have built and piled because of the hijacking of our conscious part by the scores of fears and insecurities. There is a natural rhythm inside that we always keep prisoned and chained under our too conscious fears, insecurities and worries.

Now as you open the gates, the subconscious (the gateway to the super-conscious) surfaces. It gets its free play as your body and limbs move gently in various mudras, asnas and kriyas of your own making. All the asnas manifested themselves when the sages went into a trance, allowed themselves (the conscious mind) to be off the scene, and the divine symmetry emanating from the super-conscious pools manifested in the form of body movements and postures that would unclog the stuck-up pranic channels. They observed all these random movements and these were later routinized as specific postures and the science of yoga emerged to help the sadhaks to move on the path. These were not devised or discovered. They manifested themselves. The same is with the entire science of Ayurveda where the healing nature manifested of its own through various properties in plants and herbs.

Try these movements as I suggested and you will have a feel of what I mean. The free flow at the subconscious level will ease-up the tension built in the core cells. It’s a guarantee that you will feel multiple times fresh and eased-up after just five minutes of these self-emerging Tai Chi movements in comparison to an hour-long meditation session. There is harmony around and by allowing the body, mind and emotions surrendered to it, it seeps inside. No wonder one feels better.

Well, coming back to the mild earthquake tremors. As I have already discussed, a sadhak feels various channels of pranic forces crawling across his/her body. Don’t go vain or proud over it. It’s just a different type of existence at an off-beat perception level. The sensitivities acquire a different dimension and you feel a bit more than what goes on the skin in normal conditions. The afternoon siesta means to me just to be a witness to the pranic crawlings in the body, a slightly puzzled but surrendered marvel at the strange happenings in the body. Kindly avoid going to a doctor for this. You would know by instinct that it’s beyond the domain of materialistic medical diagnosis. If your health obsession still takes you to a doctor for these energetic symptoms, the white-coats will welcome you as a new case study and give you a brand new abcxyz-syndrome. You will be the proud experimental dummy for the cause of medical science. 

The mild earthquake gently shook the Delhi NCR. As I was lying, cogitating at the pranic ripples in my body, suddenly the energetic ripples inside the body (whom I call my ‘new normal’ after feeling them for years) went into agitation. It was like tiny serpents going crazy in panic. Many other little rippling channels surfaced suddenly which go unnoticed by me in my ‘new normal’ with the typical crawlings going in certain parts. It was like the entire body was buzzing with crawlings. It was quite vigorous. I wasn’t aware that it was in response to the earthquake waves. The little shaking that one feels in a mild earthquake got magnified to a big degree and I felt my body almost jumping. It’s just a stimuli felt more deeply, at the deeper level of subatomic parts. As I said I am blessed not to be panic struck when Kundalini takes sudden new avatars and puts a different sense-perception causing something new at the experiential level. So I was just trying to convince myself that all this was due to the heightened agitation of the energies inside. Then I saw the rosary hanging from a peg on the wall swaying gently. Then I realized that it was an earthquake. But feeling it in this state was so different from the earlier earthquake experiences when the energies were in their usual routine state. If I feel ‘special’ about it then I would be coming down to the level of a dog because they can feel these tremors well in advance in their bodies. So no feeling of 'special status' please! Give them to the dogs and snakes first. Then claim yours. 

We are an outcrop of mother earth. Our body carries each and every ounce of matter and energy essence available in the womb of mother planet. So how can it avoid feeling the waves of tremor passing through the mother’s body?

If you are dealing with the spiritual art and craft of managing your heightened energies, you have to be prepared for any type of perceptional reality coming your way—from the apparently best to the worst in every sense of the term. (That’s why they always caution against any obsessive trigger of this energy in the system because you will die [the old you] even before they put you on the pyre to turn you to ashes). If you keep this fundamental fact in mind there won’t be a panic strike, there won’t be awe and wonder, there won’t be any unnecessary pride over being blessed, there won’t be anything that would look miraculous because all this is as per the natural laws of heightened perception driven by high frequency energies. A bat interprets its reality at the level of ultrasound frequencies, a snake does the same at the level of infrared light, and you dear sadhak (with your awakened Kundalini) sense an off-beat reality born of off-track energies in your system. So where is the question of you being a ‘special’ one? If you get proud about it, it would be just a snake or a bat proclaiming enlightenment for being more perceptive of a reality at the level of ultrasounds and infrared lights.

We, the common followers, are the ones who create divinity around the people trying to cope with an off-beat reality with the help of their heightened, super-sensitized, extra sense-perception. There is nothing wrong with that. We have all the rights to hatch an idealistic reality and out of that is born the art of spirituality. But it’s just like any other man/woman-made art fulfilling a small, practical purpose. The person who is trying to come to terms with the new levels of sense-perception driven by the new pranic channels is simply engaged in his puzzle like the rest of us are busy at our own level. He isn’t fundamentally superior or the rest of us basically inferior. The only difference is that the force of energies is so unorthodox that he/she is forced to adopt a totally different lifestyle and attitude to life. That’s his/her necessity. He faces challenges born of experiences that may range from the best to the worst as far as their effect on the body, mind and emotions is concerned. He is just busy in his private world of resolving those newer ways of looking at things.

Hail the lovely people living a beautifully sweet-sour life born of the usual (normal) state of energies that most of us carry in our basic system! We are so cute! We see the divinity in this weird and unorthodox life and living of someone trying to cope with his extra dimension of sense-perception. This divinity is the faith of the masses itself that sees a holy man in a person who has withdrawn within himself, absorbed in a different world where the normal things of life look redundant and irrelevant. Otherwise in the scheme of nature there is no such tag of superior and inferior level of perception. They just are, that’s it. It’s the cute, innocent acceptance by the sweet people who are ready to be the followers and sanctify their faith as divinity. What is wrong in that if it gives solace to so many? There isn’t any in my humble opinion.  

Fate and Fortitude

 

Fate seems to play its cards almost randomly, just like a throw of dice to make everything incidental. If not for this, the divine hand cannot do such injustices as this. Kala, the hardworking laborer, had to change his vocation due to chronic arthritis. He turned a smart vegetable seller, expertly shouting the names of vegetables with typical hawker’s intonation. After much practice in honing the hawker’s art and memorizing the vegetable names, he now suffers another setback. A hawker’s voice is his basic skill that draws people to his cart. He was finely shaping in the art. Sadly the budding vegetable hawker suffers a paralysis attack. His tongue has gone immobile. He has lost his voice. A man who was earning fair bread with his tongue has gone silent. He isn’t even fifty. In contrast, Laroop, who is around sixty-five, is gradually getting his tongue rasped to avail more bite and sting. He gets sloshed daily and shouts the dirtiest, foulest, vulgar most words known in the dialect. His mouth is a stinking equivalent of gutter. God seems all too happy with his poisonous tongue that spews out muck, venom and profanities—a kind of vocal horror show.

The ultimate code-maker

 

In this apparently meaningless chaos of energy circulating around, there is an urge for seeking symmetry, design, a meaningfulness, a tangible manifestation. It blooms in flowers, beautiful wings of the birds, in leaves, in animals, reptiles, everywhere. This instinct finds the codes of genetics for the evolution of species. It then seeks still subtler manifestation in emotions, in beautiful sweet-sour urge for relationships, in companionship, in interactions, in thoughts. Spiritual quest is the subtlest manifestation of this meaning-seeking artistry. This is the quest for seeking the best design pervading across all the fractional designs floating around. So design well all ye artists, design with awareness; design your career, skill, relationships, art, culture in a way that it holds you safely in its bubble. The bubble will burst one day, but till then design your destiny and dreams as per your own choices within that little space. Happy artistry of life and the best of floats in your respective bubbles!

Monkey magic

 

Monkey magic for the day: a monkey is busy in eating a guava, sitting on a branch, tail hanging down, his pink bum safely tucked in a fork in the branch overlooking the street. He eats so cutely with both hands. So unhurriedly as if this cosmos is in a pause to allow him finish eating. Eat restfully as if this entire existence has the sole task of seeing you eating like a mother. He eats half of it—the stomach knows (better than the mind) how much to take in—and throws (why carry the residuals while there are so many promising things lined up the way) the remaining guava into the street. It nearly misses the most quarrelsome woman in the locality.

If you are quarrelsome, the same circumstances will develop as per the vibrational frequency of your mind. I don’t think it was intentional but you can never be sure about a monkey. She hurls a curse at him. He grins and bares his teeth in shameless fun and shakes the branch with vigorous fun. Why be affected by wrong accusations? Shake your bum at cranky, snappy people.

His woman has moved onto a neighboring roof by this time. She gives a loud recall. ‘Ouunn’. Always keep a watch on your man. Men are men. You can expect anything. So she is justified in reprimanding him even though he is teasing a female of other species. And he instantly pays heed to her call. Your woman will always overlook your diversions if you instantly pay heed to her snappy call. There he goes hopping over to her. The best mantra of maintaining relationships: if you can’t avoid doing certain things that create sparks between you, at least listen to each other.

There they go as a nice pair and then sit on the roof parapet to tease a pet dog that is barking out his lungs at them from the yard below. They feign very robust attacks. Vent out your mischief and anger against a common enemy. Then you will have less of ammunition to hurl against each other. Moreover, spending one's armory against a common threat instantly creates a subtle bond. See, it develops so elegantly even among strangers who happen to be gripped by some untoward situation. So the couples should pick out some irksome neighbor and plan and scheme skirmishes with him to spend their ammunition. There will be lesser blasts within your own walls then. So these are some lessons from the book of Monkey baba.

The anchor point within for outer stability

 

My cousin sister's son was once critically ill, aged just twenty-five, his liver ravaged by alcoholism, lying on the ventilator support for almost two months. His multiple organs collapsing, there were slim chances of survival. And we would look up to the doctor as the ultimate savior, the one who would claw him back from the jaws of death. He understood our pain. 'See, medicines are just external aids. It's for his own body to heal from within,' he said with sympathy.

These are very substantial words. They apply to all the problems and drama that we face in life. Since our sense perception is biologically outward bound, we naturally seek the solutions outside. We feel that dis-ease, discontent, stress, pain, incompleteness, the nagging feeling of something lacking and naturally we seek the remedies outside just like we apply ointment on a wound. But healing comes from within. Ointment and medicine is just one of the favorable factors. They aren't the final solution.

It's so natural to seek the help and aid of relationships in healing the pain and the fatigue born of the exhaustive quest within. Now a relationship is just a temporary balm on the bruise. It has a placebo effect like most of the pills we take. The problem arises when we put undue expectations from an external ointment to heal us to the core. It's our own bruise. The healing has to come from within. Family, relationships, husband, wife, siblings, children, friends and acquaintance are the temporary soothing balm on the painful boil. They are there for external help. They help you in creating suitable circumstances for your internal healing, growth and evolution. But they aren't the cause of this healing. They are nice support staff at the most. And we should never forget that they themselves are the carriers of their own bruises. We are the ointment for them. They aren't complete. They are as wounded as we are. They need as much external support in healing as we do. And they look up to us as their ointment. They aren't the all-powerful panacea; they are merely sailing in the same boat.

The moment we realize this, we can forgive the little sparks born of two ointments innocently seeking each other to heal from within. This understanding and the consequent forgiveness can cement the bond within families, friends and relationships. What else is the group of family, friends and acquaintances if not a band of sailors eyeing a common shore to land and then proceed on their own journey on the land? And two lovers are simply paddling their canoe across the choppy waters, to cross a phase, land somewhere at the point of common interest and move on their journey—in this lifetime itself if the relationship breaks, or after death if it survives the vicissitudes of life. But this relative shortness or longevity doesn't undo the primary fact that this coming together was just a temporary alignment of destinies looking for their complete healing, the coming home. So we should never judge our relationships in terms of their relative longevity. Numbers are just quantitative denominations. They never cover the qualitative essence. And the qualitative essence here is that all this is transitive pairing of destinies, irrespective of the fact that a relationship lasts for a few months or lifelong. Both are almost same on the infinite spread of the eternity.

The loveliest bare

 

The loveliest bare and the sweetest dare: a celebrity woman showing her baby bump. All other bare, and a bit hidden under bikni ware, is just the incompleteness inside trying to look perfect outside. But the cute urge to bare herself with her baby bump is fired by maternal pride: for carrying a life within, for being a symbol of the cosmic womb of creation. The glow on her face in this stage surpasses any range of cosmetics. The smile is all confidence. It's not that fake smile for dousing commercial passions. The posture isn't strained and taut in an effort to be something that passionate eyes expect her to be. It's calm, relaxed and mellow like a river in its final stages of journey to the sea. She looks magical, a goddess, carrying the light of future dividing within her cells. A beacon of hope. A healing smile. A mother selflessly giving her own worth for the continuity of this beautiful game. When I see a woman twaddling on the path under the sweet burden of future like a cute penguin, I feel like touching her feet. It's a beautiful sight.

Father and sons

Father and sons—it has been a tantalizing equation. Father was a widely read man. He had a good knowledge of many domains varying across arts, science, philosophy, politics and sports. As we brothers were growing up, he put up his searching lens to spot any kind of budding talent in his pedigree. During my middle schooling, I copied a few sketches and filled them with cheap wax colors. Father knew about famous painters like Raphael. He got very amused at my works. He bought a nice compilation of classical paintings to boost and nurture the seed of a genius painter in me. I got nice sheets and lots of water colors. But I could never progress beyond putting a faint imitation of a picture put in front of me. I never had a flair for painting something original of my own. I sent my imitations for entries for kids competition appearing in Nandan and Champak magazines. Forget about winning a prize, I never ever came nearest to even being mentioned in the list of dozens of those whose works found appreciation at least. Father was wise enough to know that as a painter I had already hit my peak that wasn’t sufficient to get a name in the list of appreciated artists in children magazines. As a liberal man he didn’t force me to keep copying the easiest drawable lines. That saw my innings as a painter coming to an end.

I was a thin boy and like all skinny ones was quick and energetic. He must have seen me running around while playing. He was at least justified in assuming an athletic talent in me. Father himself was a grade one athlete during youth. He crossed twenty-two feet in long jump and ran impressive timings in many kinds of races. He filled up Mother’s iron trunk with brass trophies that he won at LIC national sports meets. It made him feel that his athletic genes might propel his son to at least a school-level glory. Our target was to hit gold at the school-level meet on children’s day. I prepared well. He would ask about my training after he arrived from office at night. Then the much anticipated day of the race arrived. That fateful race proved to be my first and last attempt at winning a gold in running competition. I was last by a big margin. In fact I was lucky enough to see all the competitors cheering for me to cross the line. ‘I drank water before the race, so got tummy ache,’ I lied. He knew the truth but allowed my lie to stay as the reason for not winning a gold.

Then in the high school I developed a pungent liking for cameras. As a well-read man Father knew about many talented photographers who had made a name for themselves. He got me a beautiful red camera. He then inspired and encouraged me to go clicking the best moments from the village life. Over the weekend, he scanned the pictures. The best was a village lampoon, who pleaded to be clicked, whom we made to wear his mother’s ghagra and stand grinning under a mulberry tree. The second best involved my brother on a eucalypts tree. But it needed special effort to spot the boy in the foliage. The reels were costly. Father thought it better to stop the supply. The camera stayed in the tin trunk for many years.

India won the world cup in cricket and the entire country turned eligible to dream of cricketing talent. We went crazy for the game. He was kind enough to buy us a few bats and dozens of balls. Cricket is a completely technical game but we would realize it during our middle age only. Our cricket was barely above the level of gulli-danda—a kind of hit and run madness on uneven grounds. We spent so many hours on this pleasant madness that even a snail would have rounded the earth in the meantime. Cricket was never going to gift us anything more than bumps and blues by the cheap, hard, heavy cork ball that we used instead of the costly standard leather one. Father realized it very soon and condemned it as the game of the idlest people on earth. He said it was nothing short of career slayer for millions of young people.

Then one fine day, I realized that real cricket was beyond our wildest imagination and self-belief. Moreover, it was a team sport where individual brilliance was always on the anvil of collective fate. Drawing on my sporting wisdom I chose an individual sport. Doordarshan had started to telecast Tennis Grand Slam matches. Steffi Graff, Gabriala Sabatini, Boris Becker, Goran Ivanosevich were its colorful brand ambassadors. I and my friend Pardeep stabbed deep into our little pocket money to pool resources to buy two rackets. Then we cleared a part of the fallow land outside the village to serve as a court. Three keekar sticks served as net poles and a jute rope as the net. Despite the best of our efforts it was a highly uneven open ground. Under a sweltering sun we would reach there with our gear including water bottles like typical tennis players. But our game never progressed beyond one correct serve in half dozen attempts and some lucky return that counted as the biggest rally. Most of our time and energy would be taken by collecting the runaway ball from the surrounding lands bearing scattered acacia and bunchgrass tufts. Tennis thus turned very tedious. After a few months of dehydrating effort we realized that any dream of playing the Grand Slam was equal to landing on the moon in a self-contrived village rocket. Those rackets are still placed in a dusty corner as souvenirs of those serve and volley days.

Badminton never progressed beyond breaking racket netting and shuttles with wild weird swings and strikes. Hockey was played with raw wood sticks cut from the trees. These were roughly shaped like standard hockey sticks with a curved lower end meant to strike and stop the ball. In the stampede after the ball cascading over irregular ground these sticks hit more feet, legs and shins than the ball itself. Football turned out to be lunatic running after the ball when someone would hit the hardest kick to send it to the clouds instead of the rival goalpost. So by the time I passed senior secondary school, all the sporting dreams had been summarily quashed. We had no talent for any of the sports or games.

Among all this passion for creating a niche in the sports I remember a school trip to Tara Devi near Shimla. After the eight class annuals, in March, we went on a trip to Tara Devi. It was a Red Cross sponsored camp. There were students from different districts in Haryana. Those fifteen days were so eventful that they need a little booklet to cover all the incidents.

One of the events was diary writing competition about our time at the secluded hill-top camp. I had filled up a notebook bearing a chronological account of our schedule and little innocent observations about nature around because I had seen the hills for the first time in my life. Ours was Hindi medium and our English teacher had to promote and vociferously recommend my Hindi scribbling to get me announced as a winner to salvage some honor for the district. That was the sole prize we won out of at least a dozen categories. So I returned with the diary writing title in my name. Father was ecstatic. To him it was almost like I had won the Booker prize. He saw writing talent in me and brought very attractive looking diaries to encourage me in the art of writing. The diaries remained unused and were later used as exercise books for algebra. So here was one more talent squashed to pulp.

Nobody cared to pick-up books in our class at the village school. Our family had, what can be called, a sort of elementary love for academics. Just because I cared to touch books made me the class topper by default. This made Father, and the entire village to go along, think that I was a very talented student. Our history teacher even thought that I had what it takes to be an IAS officer. So I was promoted as a talented academician. In the absence of any competition I had been the class topper throughout the tenure of high schooling. But I turned out to be an average science student in senior secondary schooling at the town. Father had cleared the written examination and the interview for the Officers Training Academy (OTA) but couldn’t join on medical grounds being under-weight by a good margin. He thought that maybe I had enough capability to reach at least his level in the selection process. So there I was appearing for the prestigious National Defense Academy (NDA). I passed the written examination but performed miserably in the grueling four-day interview. ‘Army needs average students, so maybe you are fit for civil services,’ Father reasoned. Many people agreed with him that I had the talent to be an IAS officer.

Till matriculation, I was decently comfortable with mathematics but after that the chambers of logic and straightforward reasoning seemed to have stopped in my brain. Quite mysteriously I suddenly lost footings in science subjects. It was a kind of emotional whirlwind where two plus two could be anything but not four. I took humanities for graduation and enrolled at the local college notorious for mischief amply carried by errant farmer boys. I rarely joined the classes. I graduated with a mediocre score in the vicinity of 58 percentage points. Then straightaway I started preparations for the civil service examination and scored 54.3 percent, a score deserving top merits. But in the most crucial personality test they gave me a measly 37 percent. Father was happy that I had reasonable talent to be an IAS officer. However some things are sometimes never destined to be. I was at last selected to the Haryana PCS. But then the politicians ensured that my selection doesn’t translate into appointment.

It was chronic boredom with life and I allowed myself to be pulled into export-import business when an opportunity presented. It was a venture with some friends. No wonder it was like a flute player going to the battlefield with his flute. It was a summary failure. I finally realized that it was time to grab any job that came my way. So I settled to be an editor with an academic publisher. Father was miserably unhappy to leave behind an editor son struggling among tomes of manuscripts in the editorial department of academic publishers.

Father worked at the LIC’s Delhi office situated at posh Connaught Palace. I had once gone with him. Walking through Sadar Bazar I got attracted to a little colorful dholak. We arrived at night with the dholak’s cord nicely slung around my neck. My younger brother took a fancy to the instrument. A dholak is nearest to the temperament of rough and rowdy farmers. The raginis, the local folk songs, are basically ear-piercing shouts and yells. Just because Amit would prefer to pound the little dholak with full force using his tiny fists, Father thought his younger son possessed talent for music. We would study at night and before going to sleep, Grandfather and Father would request him for a bedtime musical performance. Amit pounded the dholak quite well and shouted even better over the crude beats. These are primary requisites for Haryanvi raginis. I think Father was correct in spotting this talent in his younger son. In the village the people went to bed very early but Amit’s rehearsals at nine on cold winter nights shook many people out of sleep in their warm quilts.

We had annual function at our village school. Father thought it a suitable occasion to launch his son’s prodigious talent. Rehearsals were taking place for various events. Amit, dholak, Father and many of us reached the rehearsal venue and Father promised the teacher in-charge that he should be prepared for the performance of his life. It was early winter time and a soft sun beat on the grass of the lawn. Amit sat with his dholak in the middle and dozens of us formed a circle around him. The teachers were all attention with their arms crossed over chests. Amit took a long pause like a great artist. After all it was an all-important audition. But no beat would emerge. He got stage fright. Father nudged him many times but the little performer had surrendered. He won’t beat the drum and won’t shout. At least the teachers’ eardrums were spared of an assault. It was highly embarrassing for Father. He smiled apologetically. All of us walked very dejectedly to our house. Father continued with his lecture about talents and guts to show them. Amit felt very low for a day or two and kept a very low profile. He even abdicated the leadership position among the neighborhood urchins. Then Grandfather, much in good faith, requested him to sign off the day at night with a ragini. Amit seemed to pound his embarrassment upon the dholak. He shouted well and gave quite forceful strikes. The dholak burst. That was the end of musical talent in Father’s gang.  

In surprising disproportion to his medium height and slight built, Father possessed an amazing athletic talent during youth. When Amit grew to be a nicely built lanky lad by the time he finished his school, Father’s talent-seeking streak smelt an amazing athletic talent in his younger son. One fine day Father took him to the uneven ground outside the village and asked him to run at his full speed and then take a long jump in the sand pit. He appeared sure that his son will show enough athletic potential to at least cross the family mark in running and jumping. Amit looked a strong lad with long limbs, large feet, nicely jutting out knees—all the hallmarks of famed African distance runners. However, God has been very kind in gracing him with a restful demeanor. To be at peace is a precious gift. But in competitive sports you have to be a restless beast. So despite Father’s shrillest call to prompt his son for a lightening start like a deck-based fighter jet taking off from an aircraft carrier, Amit gently lumbered like an over-loaded cargo train. The historical jump broke the entire range of athletic dreams nurtured by Father. Father was considerably frail by this time—thanks to his philosophical resignation with life, the vacuum being filled with incessant smoking and serial slaying of teacups after teacups through the day. He looked sure that even he—at his physical worst—would have run faster and jumped better than his finely growing son. He was wise enough to accept the reality. That was the end of athletic strains still held up in his consciousness. He never ever asked any of us to run or jump again.

He was but bound by patriarchy and didn’t try enough to spot any talent in our sisters. Had he tried, at least our younger sister would have been a good weightlifter, boxer or wrestler, given her great strength and stamina. Sadly her potential remained untried and untested. All disappointed with life, and broken by the absence of any talent in his sons, Father would at least accept the latent (unharnessed) talent in our younger sister. ‘I would have died far happier if Binny was a boy and all you three just comely girls!’ he would say. That was his acceptance that he had failed to seek talent where it really existed among his children. By the time he realized it, it was too late. I also feel that maybe Father was bound by the thick chains of patriarchy in the rural farming society where seeking talent among girls was totally absent during those times. Thank God things have changed now and many girls from the villages are making a good name for their talent.               

A common Indian voter's humble appeal

 Election commission please always remember that when a poor laborer skips a day's wages and lines up to vote in sweltering heat, he has some fundamental belief in things taking a favourable turn for his miserable fate...and for the same he expects the elections to be a defining force in reshaping his/her miserable life. Elections are morning prayer hymns in the festival of democracy. Don't forget this and do your constitutional duty in a fair and impartial manner. Otherwise the Indian democracy will be dented irreversibly--or has it already been--and you will be judged very very strictly in the coming times. 

Election commission of India, we have a right to know from where and how these 1 crore and 7 lakh additional votes surfaced in your data published after almost two weeks of the polling. In the face of unsuitable and insufficient explanations by you, your role will be under dark shadows and the foundation of Indian democracy will shake. It will put the country embroiled in lots of internal strife post June 4. The people won't accept this infringement upon their democratic faith.

Yin and Yang

 

There is a lovely concept of yin and yang energies in Taoism. Yin is the female component, the all-embracing emptiness, the womb, the Shakti of creation. Yang is the male component, the all-pervading tendency for expansion, manifestation, materialization and fullness. No wonder they are cause-effect and effect-cause simultaneously. Emptiness is self-sustaining, but fullness can be an instinct at the most. No wonder men have such hunger to fill the emptiness pervading around, symbolized by women.

A relationship between a man and a woman is driven by the basic characteristics of these respective polarities. A man is basically looking for the same physical gratification in all the women he goes into a relationship with. But a woman is looking for an ideal form to fill up the cosmic emptiness of which she is a carrier entity, or a symbol. If a man has one reason to get bored with his woman (at the level of body), she has multiple times more reasons to feel bored with her man at the level of body, thoughts, emotions, soul-to-soul connect and still more deeper things. The search of a man for his ideal woman is relatively very easy because he is only seeking variants across hair, color, lips, breasts, hips and other body parts. A woman, on the other hand, has a very deep challenge, a deep peek into her own self, where she tries to modulate her expectations as per the silent depths inside her.  

The yin energy is too powerful and limitlessly empty. The yang energy is just the flash of twinkling stars of materiality in the infinitely empty corridors of the cosmic spirit. And man has always been afraid of the yin energy’s potential and insecure about his fragmented attempts as a filler of the emptiness. So at the level of flesh, i.e., the ‘matter’ of which he is the carrier element, he has tried to subdue and cut down the role of women in society. Patriarchy is born of a deep sense of inferiority, incapacity and complexes carried by the men.

Taoists believe that it takes seven years for a man to understand the rhythms of a woman’s body, the next seven years to feel her emotions and mind, and the next seven to know her spirit. In strict mathematical terms, I would say a woman is worth three men combined at the level of matter, energy and spirit. And man knows it and that’s why he tries to keep her limited to a third of her potential to keep her in a relationship. It works in conservative societies where menfolk have come together to formulate social laws and norms in terribly one-sided ways to keep the women enchained as a fraction of their real selves. But it fails in liberal, modern societies. With empowerment and choice, the women easily trample over multiple men at the level of matter, energy and spirit. So in liberal societies the women carry a bigger sense of their men being incomplete because here they aren’t dependent upon them for survival. Here their socio-economic freedom frees them from the helpless acceptance of their status like in conservative societies.   

I think the empowered, self-standing and well-educated women should be given the legal option of polyandry. She stands for the eternal void that can receive all the drama of materiality trying to fill up her cosmic emptiness. The reason why a really capable woman needs multiple partners at the same time is very simple. Men arrive in fragments. The rampaging bulls in the bed usually carry small brains. The brainy ones have little emotions. The artists and poets would lack dependability in worldly practicalities. The Einstein type genius would have their own eccentricities. The spiritual guys would be good guide but very hollow as partners because they are looking to save their semen through yogic practices. So why not legally allow them to have multiple partners simultaneously: one for naughty bed fun, one for beautiful poetry, one for hardcore logic and reasoning, one for spirituality. It will solve the problem of broken hearts. Because the broken hearts again go seeking solace and get again broken. Let there be an official trial with polyandry in developed societies at least.

There is another topic quite related to the yin and yang energies. Yin energy is essentially Kundalini energy, the nurturer of the seed of creation, the ground for material manifestation to take place. All the literature on Kundalini has been written by male followers on the path of spirituality. The basics of experiences and bodily manifestations have been gathered—even though individual variations happen across the male bodies as well—and we have texts dealing with the energy’s movement across the various pranic channels, the changes in physiology, the results of these changes and more.

But we have missed a very important point in the Kundalini discussion so far. It has been male oriented. And a female spiritualist reading the text might be driven to believe that her body will also experience the same as a male body. I don’t think Kundalini will manifest in her body in a typical male’s way. She is essentially Kundalini body herself. So in her case it’s not a fundamental transformation. It is only in the degrees of refinement of the same basic quality. A man will be transformed into a fundamentally different entity; she on the other hand will be further refined in the same genre. It’s like the man goes through a forge and a stone will be crystallized into diamond. It’s a fundamental shift. That’s why the process is so drastic and even mysterious in his body. In the case of a woman, it is like refinement of the same ore, for example, refining gold from its natural ore. So it’s not that drastic in nature as in a man’s body. These are subtle transformations, delicate and deep in emotions and thoughts. Her body is already a creative mechanism of yin energy, so the flow of extra creative energy in the form of an awakened Kundalini doesn’t test her system like it does a man’s body.

A man is primarily the dropper of the seed in the scheme of propagation. She but is the entire field where the whole scheme of evolution of a new life unfolds. So even if an extra dimension of energy unfolds in her system, it won’t revolutionize her organism like it does to a man’s system because she is already a carrier of the same essential energetic entity. Qualitatively it’s the same; it’s just a matter of quantitative variation in degrees. But a man’s system undergoes fundamental qualitative changes. It requires completely new rewiring of the system. Hence they undergo such hair-raising experiences. In case of a woman, it’s far too subtle, like her loving smile for her man would transform into loving motherly smile for all. So her transformation is more in thoughts, emotions, soul and spirit. At the tangible level it won’t be felt in the body like a man does.

The real freedom

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK) was a free soul. He broke all chains of religious and spiritual institutions. He didn't believe in the guru-disciple equation in the strict sense of it. He dismantled the spiritual kingdom of Theosophical Society erected around him for making him its spiritual king. He was for the utmost freedom of mind; freedom beyond even spiritual syllabus involving spiritual texts taught by the spiritual masters in religious institutions. But the world cannot bear up with so much of freedom. We need our anchor points to feel at home. So quite ironically, Krishnamurti Foundation piled up around him while the thinker of freedom and ultimate liberation kept speaking against all institutions and institutionalization of thoughts.

Gurus have spiritual powers, just like politicians have political powers or rich have the power of wealth. And power has a tendency to manage things as per its chosen set of reality, its judgment and likes and dislikes. A mission is a mission even if it's holy in nature. Even in the case of spiritual empowerment, there is a very subtle trace of manipulation of things, even if it's for a noble cause, as per the likes and dislikes of the spiritually powerful person. They have their mission of nobility and it needs missionaries. I have read in the biographies of many holy masters that they were made to do all the holy work by the power and instructions of their gurus. They were given a task and they hardly had any option. They had to do it. This is where Krishnamurti went off the road from the main spiritual thoroughfare. He was for complete annihilation of any bondage including routinized faith, scriptural principles, ashram system and all the allied things in the domain. To me a best guru is the one who gives all he has to a follower, without expecting any missionary work, and leave him or her to seek their own destiny. Like a father who brings up his children in a healthy environment and then is all happy to see them setting up their own homes.

Stay at one place and expectations creep up. They want you to take up their holy work. I have always felt insecure about being piously hijacked by a holy man for his humanitarian mission. So I have a strategy for this. I go to ashrams, have their darshan and before their eyes stabilize and start building plans for you, I run away. So dear sadhaks, take your nectar, and flutter away like a butterfly taking honey from various flowers. Go to holy places of all kinds, absorb and soak all the positive energy and keep hopping. Why get anchored in one ashram? Read scriptures, as much as you can. But don't expect them to be the reality itself. They are mere pointers. Never expect to understand or agree to everything written in a holy book. A holy book has something positive for all types of people. If you don't agree with certain portions, it simply means that part isn't for you. But you will have your agreements and likes further on in the same text. So filter what is suitable for you. Read scriptures, have darshan of holy men, go for pilgrimages, roam in free forests, bathe in untamed rivers, interact with people, do your worldly duties, keep moving...and finally all this seeking tires you out to help you stabilize within yourself. Happy journey!

A master of lies

 

This neighbor believes in his lies to the extent of turning his white lies into golden nuggets of truth. No wonder, it also means that he naturally changes any fact into fiction. It entered my mind to suggest him to take to writing, a profession suitable for creative souls like him. But then he thinks that writers are most negligible and mad people. In any case, he uses his creative instinct to milk situations and circumstances by twisting reality in a way to make him accomplish little cheatings and sweet little forgeries. It’s a kind of gentle milking, not an outright stabbing robbery.

A bunch of grouchy fellows

 

This particular petrol pump has a very combustible staff. They have frayed tempers all the time. It seems staying near oil has given them fiery tempers like the commodity they serve to the engines. Say anything, and they will speak very tartly as if that also is a part of their job. I have never seen anyone smiling at this establishment. I always keep wondering how come so many snappy, cranky people have been brought together by the chance winds. I once tried to infuse a flame of smiles there, but it aggravated the situation. So I also try to be like them when I’m getting petrol there. Do in Rome as the Romans do.

Just being so...

How will a stone know that it’s a stone? It knows how to ‘be’ a stone, that’s why it exists. From the tiniest to the biggest, from the moving to the unmoving, from the dust to a flower, everything knows how to ‘be’. In fact, the things considered as insentient by us know it perfectly well how to ‘be’. The atomic arrangement in them knows how to be a stone. But there is a tendency in the element of just 'being so' to 'become something' and that drives this multilayered flux from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’ ranging from galaxies to a dew drop.

At their essential core, ‘just being so’ and ‘becoming something’ are part of the same game; in fact the same thing. A stone looks just a stone, but it's becoming something as well at the same time. The process is very subtle. And what is consciousness? This is the force of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ itself. The debate is endless and the question will stay unresolved till eternity as long as we are compartmentalizing matter, energy and consciousness as separate entities. That’s a very funny convenience we create. But what else is this existence apart from the limitless potential to create? Mother creation is just an open-ended freeway of timeless and spaceless possibilities.

Coming back to the question of consciousness. If you segregate one fundamental entity into three different categories, like here in matter, energy and consciousness, you have infinite possibilities to create logic, analysis, hypothesis or any other output of mind-work. That’s our logical creation only. It hardly deals with the essential commonality between matter, energy and consciousness. It but serves a purpose. This categorization of the same unity into fragmented elements gives rise to fabulous brainwork in the form of science, religion, ethics, moral codes, education and culture—everything belonging to the blissful and agonizing maya that we create. Who can stop the little children from making castles, dolls, dogs, toys, sepoys from the same mud and clay? They are free to play and take it very seriously and believe their creations to be quite different from each other. But does that make any difference to the mud being just mud? The entire profession of consciousness scientists will turn redundant the moment we put up the little toys of energy, matter and consciousness into the dustbin and mesh them together to make them the undifferentiated clay.

This creation, this game, this play of energy, this churning of matter, this storm of consciousness is helpless in ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. It goes on. And all of us are entitled to erect smart structures of nations, religions, gods, deities, science, cars, planes, relationships, smiles, tears, everything. So keep ‘becoming’ all you ‘beings’. And once you ‘become’, again try just to ‘be’. It keeps us busy like every particle around us is madly busy in spinning. All this is just a tiny storm in the teacup, a little ripple in a tiny corner of the universe or multiverse, whatever you name it. And this play and expansion is so funny as to take itself very-very seriously and churn out wonders, new shapes and phenomena at every point of its expansion. But all this is the same primordial dust playing with itself, making different looking entities: consciousness trying to be conscious of itself. A sort of self-driving motive for its journey; a never-ending journey.

If you are trying to be conscious of something outside yourself, the journey can’t be endless and later or sooner you will stop. But here consciousness is following its own tail, trying to be conscious of itself, like a cat chasing its tail in a circle, unleashing a blizzard of happenings. And that creates newer and newer avenues for latest versions. I hope you remember the ancestors of little house lizards were once mighty dinosaurs. All this maya is simply infinity trying to be limited and make a meaning of its meaninglessness through laws and generalization. And we carry the same tendency of the cosmic entity’s fundamental quest. We are a little ounce of universe chasing its tail, spinning on its axis to find some meaning of all this spinning around. From the so-called best to the worst, we finally convince ourselves that that’s the real meaning. But that again is a solace, a conditioning of our mind to accept something that seems to give us some respite from the mad circling around in pursuance of our own tails.

Whatever meaning you create, whatever toy you make, it hardly matters to the primordial clay. But yes, the clay toys that we create through individual and collective organizational set up in the form of nations, organizations, religion, faith, gods, deities, bureaucracy everything, that’s merely an acceptance, an agreement to behold the validity of our creation. It has no bearing on the fundamental mud and clay, the cosmic pool of consciousness, we are all wallowing in. I have repeatedly used the word ‘consciousness’ because we have all agreed to define it as such. So spin your webs well. Create your realities. Dance on the floor quite energetically. Contort yourself in your dancing as much as you want, move and shake in your own weird ways. Only caution, try not to trample others toes as you go dancing.

During the dynamic meditation sessions at an Osho ashram, people would let loose their inner emotions through crying, laughing, rolling on the floor, shouting or singing. Some would roar like lions and I would be scared that they might bury their molars in someone’s throat. I was particularly scared for one old tauji who usually turned into the cutest goat after every dynamic meditation session. He would crawl on all fours and move around bleating. That was when I got apprehensive that the lions in the group might pounce upon him for their dinner. Jokes apart, the cute tauji had every right to become a goat as long as he took care of not trotting out of the hall and enter the garden for grazing on well-tendered flowers.

Something from the past

 

Father could read, write and speak English as if he was a professor of English in some English-speaking country. A wonderstruck group of white tourists had given him the certificate of English proficiency like this: ‘Sir, you know and speak English better than our professors!’ So that is a kind of indication of his mastery in the field. He worked as a middle-level governmental employee in the Life Incorporation of India (LIC) and spent most of his working years at the LIC headquarters at Connaught Place in Delhi. He commuted daily by train to office. So his was a day stretched in contrasts—the day at the most cosmopolitan spot in India and the night at the most rustic village.

During the weekends he simple read books. He provided the money for the upkeep and Mother carried the domestic cart on her strong peasant woman shoulders. She did the household chores, took care of the cattle in the barn and managed farming as well. Father looked a saintly man, somewhat a worldly hybrid—in looks at least—among Swami Ramakrishna, Shirdi Sainath and Maharishi Raman. He was a very simple man and wore plain kurta-pyjama. So one day when he was in full form, giving a lecture in English to some young college students in the train on the way to office, a disbelieving farmer nudged at his neighbor and exclaimed, ‘This man is haunted by the ghost of an Englishman!’ Father heard it and from then on it became his identity in the family.

Well, I inherited his skills to a partial extent and the little group of villages in the countryside declared me to be the most suitable candidate to crack the Indian Civil Service (ICS) examination, the gateway to the most powerful bureaucratic positions in the country. So naturally I found myself preparing for the corridors of power. I was the darling of the entire village’s eyes. They wanted me to become a big magistrate or commissioner to have a part in the ‘power game’ so that they would have someone from the village to protect them when there were traffic challans, family feuds, drunken fights, bloody skirmishes over lands, etc. A few drunkards in the village were sure that life would be a cakewalk for them once I became a bada sahib and they would stay at my official quarters. One particular liquor-lover, whom I had seen falling from his bicycle many times, had already appointed himself as my future official driver once I became a district magistrate.

These days the Indian Civil Services examination has been pared down to test majorly the attitudional smartness of the candidates. But during our days it was a behemoth of syllabus literally covering everything on earth. The exams went through the year across various stages requiring one to be buried in tomes of books. There were so many books as would fill up a decent-sized room to the ceilings across its full dimensions. So that was a tapasya. It was just studies, studies and studies. It was just like a yogi buried in tapasya in his cave. For seven long years I was in day-night studies and hardly remember anything else from my youth.

I came very near to fulfill the dreams of my father and the entire village. I had cleared two stages of written exams and the final interview remained, the all-important half hour that could undo the entire year’s labor. I had scored very high in the written test, as I would come to know later in the final mark sheet. If things would have gone even averagely good, given my high written score, I might have been selected for the most coveted diplomatic corps, the group of elite officers who represent the country as ambassadors. But the higher forces! My brain went numb during that half hour. Something pushed the talk into the zone of negativity, non-confidence and arguments. I received the least possible marks in the interview to be summarily rejected. I had four chances, so for four years I futilely ran into the wall only to be recoiled into failure.

The villagers hadn’t yet lost their faith in me. The second most coveted bureaucratic posts at the provincial level (Provincial Civil Services—PCS) were still available to fight for. So my next three years were spent in this tapasya. Once you have cleared the ICS exam, clearing the PCS is very easy, so I was clearing the PCS exams pretty easily. But selection to the PCS involved lots of tests, not strictly falling in the zone of examination and personality test. One had to, at least till then, clear the written exam with very high score and for facilitation in the minutes-long personality test one had to either own a few sackfuls of currency as well as political recommendation from the highest political elements. I had none. So as it would happen, I would score very high marks in the written part but would be shown the way out in the interview, which used to be a gross mockery, a mere formality for manipulation, during those times.

That is when the element of faith entered in my life. I had realized that certain forces, bigger than any of my effort and academic capabilities, were stonewalling my efforts. And only faith in powerful deities can break those walls. There was this very famous astrologer who boasted about a certain mantra sadhna. He proclaimed that if done by serious students, he/she can easily enter the astrological chart of raja yoga, that’s a sharer in ‘power’ in the most coveted positions. It involved 125 thousand chantings of a mantra after taking the sankalp of that goal to be achieved. The mantra I would keep secret for its sanctity. It was in worship of Ma Tulsi, holy basil, the sacred plant, a representative of Ma Lakshmi. The ritual involved getting Ma Tusli and Saligram (a phallic representative of Lord Vishnu) married with a mauli thread tied for their sacred union and chanting the mantra 125 thousand times with a Tulsi mala in hand. Now please read carefully about my sankalp, my purported blessing from the sacred plant in lieu of my mantra sadhna. ‘Hey Ma please get me selected to the HCS,’ I sought the blessing in this literary presentation. It meant, O Mother Tulsi please get me selected to the HCS. Here HCS stands for the Haryana Civil Services. They become additional commissioners and sub-divisional magistrates, a step down from the all-powerful ICS.

My mantra sadhna started. It was rainy season. I had set-up the divine union between Ma Tusli and Holy Saligram in our garden and would daily chant the mantra, just lips moving and the mantra vibrating across my being, holding the Tulsi mala in hand, eyes closed, a butter lamp and incense burning in front of the deities, rolling my fingers over Tulsi beads. I would daily perform the mantra sadhna for three-four hours for about a month to complete the count of 125 thousand mantra japs. In between I got one of the worst malaria bouts of my life because there were mosquitos, it being the rainy season. My condition was really bad but I kept the schedule and chanted while lying flat in front of the little instrument of my faith for those two days when my weakness didn’t allow me to sit. But thankfully I was successful in completing the task. The mantra sadhna was complete.

The next attempt brought miracles. I was selected. Finally. So much for Mother’s blessings! To be selected for a post for which, even then, people would offer 50 lakh rupees in corruption money, for which a recommendation nothing short of a state’s Chief Minister’s direct recommendation would do the trick, me, a simple guy without that much money and that big political recommendation, was a miracle. Somehow things had taken a course as to facilitate me through the hitherto unsurpassable hurdles. The group of villages went into celebration. They would finally have a magistrate to shift little battles in their favor. I would always give extra affection to those whom others spurned, so the much-maligned liquor-lovers declared that now their woes are over, they would live with their dear magistrate.

I had asked to be blessed with an ‘HCS selection’ and with the punya of my mantra sadhna I had got ‘selected’. However, a massive ‘but’ remained. Destiny still chuckled with glee and anticipation over the futile efforts of its puppet.

Now I share the most important part in the game of mantra sadhna. You must have read stories about demons doing hard tapasya, doing rigorous sadhnas for a blessing by the devtas. The devtas would finally appear and ask them for a blessing. Now the little-brained—with loads of muscles though— rakshasha would blurt like a child and ask for the boon, foolishly wording it in a way that it left a big loophole for their own undoing even with the Godly blessing. I had done the same. I had demanded to be ‘selected to the HCS’ and Ma Tusli blessed me with a ‘selection’ in lieu of my mantra sadhna. I thought that was all that was required to change one’s destiny. But there was more to it. There is a big difference between getting ‘selected for the HCS’ and ‘becoming a HCS officer’. Then the unthinkable happened. It happened for the first time in independent Indian history that a duly selected PCS officers batch was denied appointment. Mother’s boon ended at getting me ‘selected’. In my folly I hadn’t insisted on ‘becoming an HCS officer’. I thought both are same because till then getting ‘selected’ was synonymous with ‘becoming’. So sometimes Gods would take the help of linguistic loopholes to still have their say despite all of your efforts.

The batch got into political controversies between rival chief ministerial candidates fighting an internecine battle for power. And it was messed up. The case is still gasping with feeble breaths in the courtrooms even after 20 years. During this time I have seen the grossest of misuse of power by judges and powerful politicians. There were sometimes very shiny days in between when all were assured that finally justice would be done but it would soon get undone by a sudden squall of unexplained events that would again cast gloomy shadow on the case. I can report all those mysterious, sudden events but it would take several pages. Anyway, of that sometimes later. I’m still involved in the litigation, not for power or pelf. What do they matter now? But it’s just out of habit maybe, or possibly an inclination to stick to the concept of justice. It just draws me sometimes to keep the case alive.

I don’t blame corrupt judges and powerful politicians for the episode. They are mere puppets in the bigger game unfolding around. If at all there are some lacunae, they are there in the wording of my seeking the blessing in lieu of my mantra sadhna. Like a cute little demon, seeking boons and blessing in return for tapasya, I left a linguistic loophole which allowed destiny to fulfill my wishes as well as guard its own mysterious plan.

And I don’t have any complaints against Ma Tusli either. She knows better what is good for the child. Recently during the rainy season, I slipped horribly and landed like a log on the stone floor. I landed near a pot bearing holy Mother Tulsi. The fall was so hard as to leave me numb for many minutes. There was absolutely no pain or injury. Like a grounded child, rattled out of my senses, I looked at Ma Tusli. One of her branches was broken. Didn’t she receive me in her embrace like a kind mother and took a looming fracture on her own? I haven’t removed that dry broken branch till now. It reminds me of what she has done for me. Then it becomes so easy to forget and walk over what wasn’t done.   

The web of relative, referential, shifting truths

 

The teacher asks a rich student in the class to write a story on poverty. The boy writes:

‘There was a very poor family. Their car driver was also very poor. The gardener, cook, and other servants in the house were also very poor. Their car was also not as good as those kept by the rich people in the city. The children couldn’t go to Europe for summer vacations like the rich people did. It was a very poor sad family.’

So this was the boy’s meaning of poverty. Well, all our individual truths are in fact mere funny judgments and opinions drawn from the relatively higher or comparatively lower reference points. And they will keep shifting. With more money in the said boy’s family, the definition of poverty will shift to a new point. The shifting facts can never hold real universal truth in their grasp. Debates, discussions based on shifting facts and varying truths will at the most give careers, business opportunities, one-upmanship but the universal truth stays hidden. It hasn’t any worldly reference. Its only reference is that it strictly isn’t in reference to whatever we perceive with ordinary sense perception.

What is the way out left then? The interesting web formed by these relative, referential, shifting truths—mere judgments and opinions in reality—is so seductive, so alluring. It seems so real.

Well, crawl through the web and go into saturation with the pursuits. If that gives you real joy then you already are a saint, somehow detached from all that engages you. But if you feel the restlessness and meaninglessness of all this then start filtering out. Neti, neti…not this, not this. With your experiential realization you will walk through the clutter and see the charming futility of all this. Maybe then the self-sustaining, self-standing, immovable eternal truth will grace you with the profoundest meaning of all this meaninglessness exploding around.

Self-love

 

Charity begins at home. Self-love is the seed of the overall tree of love that grows to cover the surroundings. Self-love is the source light of all that can be seen beyond all the darkness. But there is a very subtle, thin line between self-love and selfishness. The latter might even impersonate as the former. But we have to understand, self-love is born of joy. It's something positive in nature. It's a high frequency emotion. The other is born of our fears and insecurities. It carries a low frequency. This is basically a contraction, a primal instinct for self-preservation. Self-love is expansion, evolution. In strictly material terms, they might appear the same numbers. But they are antipodal, like 1 and −1, 2 and −2. They move in the opposite directions on the axis. One sulks and sucks; the other smiles and expands. But at the operational level, it’s a very thin line. One has to be very careful because it's so natural to enter to the other side, the zone of negativity. And constant awareness and continuous asking the self about the difference between self-love and selfishness will do the task.

The childish excitement of fear

 

Nevaan is six-year-old now. As expected, cartoon programs on the television are his first love. His concentration on the shows is so hard that batting even his own eyelids seems a disturbance. We find him staring at his cartoon heroes so hard that his eyes get watery. The other day, only one cartoon channel was live due to some network problem. It’s a ghost program involving a ferocious demon as the villain. Nevaan is seriously cowering with fear but he cannot let go the only option available during the cartoon slot allotted to him after his school homework. He is crouched up in a corner on the sofa, trying to make himself safer. Then he demands a heavy blanket to further insulate himself from the ghosts in the show. He has already switched on all the lights available in the room. There he is watching the scary show from under the heavy blanket, bundled in a safe corner on the sofa, only his eyes popping out to make the most of the show.

Kundalini Shakti

 

This sharing is something deeply personal in nature, at the level of experience, in the domain of experiential knowledge. I’m not sure how many of the readers will relate to it. Still, its mere theoretical reading will make it interesting. This much I’m sure. It lies in the domain of spirituality wherein all the seekers have their individualistic experiences. There comes a time when one feels like sharing them with others after the initial years of closely guarding the secret as if it’s a treasure. There is no specific reason behind guarding the experience initially and there is hardly any reason for sharing it later. These things happen of their own, mere happenings.

All of us are essentially spiritual beings carrying lesser or more worldly baggage. The latter is merely a fuel for the journey in this lifetime, an accumulation born of our karmic balance from the journey so far. There is no fundamental flaw in carrying one’s own unique worldly baggage. But there is a temptation to take the fuel as the main thing, the essential component of life, while it’s mere fuel and is supposed to get burnt in the form of karmic dissipation, taking us to further destinations in a bigger dimension of perception and consciousness.

The theme of this discussion is Kundalini. I’m sure most of you must have some theoretical knowledge about this much fabled thing. Kundalini is an auxiliary dimension, a seed of potential, lying dormant in our psychosomatic system. It’s a short-cut, a gateway, a portal, a trigger point for speeding up of the evolutionary process of consciousness. Of course, just like any other short-cut it has its risks, dangers, possibilities, rewards, agonies, ecstasies, everything in fact.

The fundamental law of cosmos is primarily pure potentiality. Kundalini is a seed of that potentiality in the human physiognomy. It is a trigger point to unleash a sudden current of energy to take your consciousness to a level where it would have taken several lifetimes in the natural sequence of karmic resolution to help one solve all the entanglements and their resultant pain and suffering.

There is a set of controllables and uncontrollables in one’s life. I tried my level best to succeed in normal worldly terms like anyone around. But the set of uncontrollables at a level of existence beyond my efforts would always push me back to the starting point. Naturally that gives one a lot of pain and agony. One questions the basics that operate the world around him or her. And before you realize you are seeking solace and answers to your burning questions in a spiritual dimension after having failed to solve the puzzle in the normal thoroughfare of life.

I never had a guide in physical form on the teasing and testing field of spirituality. Based on my understanding of things I went into pilgrimages, bhakti of various deities and yogic practices. I was crazy about one particular yogic posture. It involved hammering the base chakra, muladhara, with relentless force. This chakra is the seat of the pure energy potential named Kundalini, which isn’t otherwise needed to live a normal happy life and that’s why most of us are born with it in its sleeping state. As I would realize later, this particular yoga amounted to forcibly prodding the sleeping coiled energy—the serpent—at its seat of rest. And the snake rose. The energy moved. It shook the world that was related to me involving body, relationships, career, family, emotions, thoughts, everything that had the slightest bearing on my current identity. That’s why they say that it’s a living death—you die to your former self in this lifetime only. But for that there is a lot of examination one has to cross through.

My organic structure wasn’t prepared for this sudden onslaught. Imagine a thousand watt current being suddenly let loose through a normal 240 watt wire. What would happen? It will heat it up, there will be sparks, and it may even burn. Similarly, the human system is for the normal flow of energy. The organs are adapted to a normal operation of energy, most of it getting pleasantly getting dissipated in our sweet-sour pursuits and just a fraction going up to activate our neurons which define the conscious part of our mind, the thinking mind.

The hyper current gave me many nightmares which manifested at many levels—thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, finance, career, family. It ruffles you forcefully, taking a tight grip on you, as if shaking you out of your slumber at lower levels of awareness. Literally it left me in a dark night of the soul. It was a karmic leap, a jump into the unknown. I was all alone to fend the onslaught for myself. If there were hidden forces supporting me I wasn’t aware of it. But in effect it was the toughest phase of my life. There was so much of agony, pain, fear and phobia to make life almost unlivable. I was running all around to clutch at any straw for salvation. I went on pilgrimages, roamed all alone in forests, went to ashrams, fell at the feet of holy men—all this just to save myself from getting sucked into a void.

Religious differentials melted. Spiritual solace was welcome from any corner. I would enter a gurudwara, mandir, masjid, church, Buddhist monastery with the same reverence and faith. Anything as long as it would save me from the darkness. I tried to be an unquestioning bhakt of many deities. I tried and tested yoga, pranayama, mantra sadhna, fasting, anything that was suggested to my dizzying mind. The blizzard of energy was making me dance to its tunes as if I was merely a lifeless puppet. The force of energy was seeking newer and newer avenues to hurl its fury into.  

Then about six or seven years back I started worshipping Lord Hanuman with full fervency. I kept Tuesday fast and read Hanuman chalisa from a booklet because I couldn’t chant it from memory. I had never memorized it fully. At that time I was visiting Osho’s Murthal ashram where Sadhguru Osho Shailendra—Bhagwan Osho’s real brother—gave mala diksha and sermons. Once I was lucky when he put his blessing hand on my head. I was ready. I was dry fodder. I have no other explanation other than to take it as a case of shaktipat. It triggered a chain of experiences that shook the theoretical foundations of my knowledge. Just recently I had been lucky to be blessed by His Holiness Dalai Lama as well. So I would say that was a lucky phase for me.

Shortly after his blessing touch on my head, on one of my Tuesday fasts I was reading Hanuman chalisa from a little booklet, incense and oil lamp burning in front of the idol. Then it happened. An intense external force gripped me very tight. I was in perfect awareness but the body was under the control of forces that I cannot attribute to my conscious mind. I was twisted and turned in very tough yogic postures which I cannot even think of performing in normal condition. It was like a mysterious, profoundly powerful hand was twisting and turning me in tough yogic postures. I was helpless and allowed myself to be treated like a ball of dough being made into many shapes. Everything was unfolding by itself. These were no weird, asymmetrical contortions. There was a symmetry, a harmony, a precision behind them. As if each set of movements would complete a cycle.

Lord Hanuman’s idol was put on a little house temple of stone. The stone ledge in the front for placing lamp and offerings had a sharp edge. I was twisted in a lotus posture and my torso started going down, taking my forehead towards the sharp stone edge. The slow rhythmic descent to the stone edge was very precise to leave the middle of my eyebrow on the edge. Then the brow started drawing along the thin edge. Just a millimeter down and it would have injured my eye because the rub of the eyebrow on the edge was quite forceful. Completing the cycle on one side, the same happened with the other eyebrow on the other side. The divine synchronicity knows more than our fear, planning and calculations. There was flawless geometry and timing behind these movements. There were many such movements for around 45 minutes. Strangely, I wasn’t scared even for a second during all this. Some mystical assurance kept me convincing that all this is good for you. So there was no panic. How will fear and panic survive when one is straightaway linked to the cords of divinity?  

After that the force left me in voluntary control of my body. My spine got so tautly drawn and straight that I felt like a wooden plank. Then arrived the sweet aftermaths of the divine exercise performed on my body by the higher force—a prasada, a sweet reward. I found myself singing Hanuman chalisa all by myself. I hadn’t been able to memorize it in a yearlong chanting on Tuesdays. Now it was freely flowing from my mouth.

After that for about six months I would experience involuntary mudras and body movements that would play with me like a puppet. Then the crawling sensations started. I could feel the crawling movements across various prana channels in the body; like serpents crawling over the back and the head. There are little channels of crawling energies that I feel all the time. They aren’t painful. One gets used to them after a time. Different channels take shape at different stages. But the one on agya chakra is most forceful, keeps on sending streams of invisible energies down the bridge of the nose and on both sides. Another on the right side of lower back is also significantly active, and many along the spine. I know these are the pranic onslaughts let loose by Kundalini to remove the karmic entanglements still existing in my system.

Maybe all this happens to make us realize that we aren’t just what we think ourselves to be; or maybe to trash our ego that you aren’t solely in the driver’s seat of your destiny. Primarily, it’s to convince you that there are bigger realities and dimensions. At the body’s level, maybe it’s all meant to remove the psychic entanglements in our karmic structure. I know I have lots of karmic entanglements from the past to resolve and that’s why the rise of energy has posed such challenges. It isn’t necessary that someone else will go through the same sensations. All of us have unique genetic structure—an offshoot of our unique karmic arrangement—which responds in various ways to the exposure of this extra surge of energy. Still there are some common observations and on the basis of those experiences, observations and responses of the human body the theoretical framework of Kundalini has been set up to help us understand the basics of it. But one thing is sure, beyond the tiny framework of commonalities, the manifestations in different bodies are varying to a big degree. So we cannot generalize or compare one’s individual experience with others. These are mere pointers. I just shared my experience and it doesn’t in any way lay claim to any fundamental truth or law behind the Kundalini experience.

The journey continues my dear fellow travellers on the path. As the brain adjusts to this new surge of energy cascading across its hitherto unused neural pathways, I hear various types of sounds in my ears and the head. The story of sounds that you must have read one hears in Kundalini awakening is definitely true. I hear buzzing bees, tinkling bells, sharp chin-chin of anklets, drums, flute and rumbling of clouds. This is the divine music of high vibrational frequencies. Meditating on them can take a sadhak into very high dimensions of perception. But I’m a common man. I have my responsibilities and worldly duties to fulfill to resolve all my karmic issues still lying unsettled and creating my circumstances. So I travel on the path without any spiritual pretenses—balancing my path between worldly needs and the food for my soul.

I’m open to guidance. It always arrives from different corners. Presently, I have a hunch that His Holiness Mahavatar Babaji is guiding me on the path. And I feel privileged and blessed. I’m not bothered about the truth of it. Laugh at me, scoff at me but that’s my truth at the moment.