The myth of healing ointment

 My cousin sister's son was once critically ill. Just 25, 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 they themselves are the carriers of their own bruises. We are the ointment for them. They aren't complete. They are as wonded as we. They need as much external support in healing as we. And they look upto 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, 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.

Lessons from the book of monkey baba

 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 soecially 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, 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 at 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 funda 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 nuisant neighbor and plan and scheme skirmishes with him to spend their ammunition. There will be lesser blasts within your own walls then.

The artistry

 In this apparently meaningless chaos of energy circulating around, there is an urge for seeking symmetry, design, a meaningfullness, 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 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  bestest design pervading 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!

Walking through the natural remnants

Cornered by stressful notes and peppered with pungent perspectives, I decide to beat my sense of victimhood by opening myself to the friendly humor of the farmlands surrounding the village. There is intense agriculture. Under the haunting patriarchy of the supreme species on the earth, the mother soil carrying a long haul of miseries, burdens and unmet dreams. Where will you dump your feeling of victimhood when the earth itself seems carrying the same burden?

Gone are the days of dark and deep woods. The wastelands and fallow lands, which were the last refuge of the wilderness until a decade ago, have shrunk to invisibility. The anarchist has shrewdly turned mother nature into a shadowy realm where everything is a mere utopia, a poetic fancy, judged from the mainstream perspectives. Still there are some scanty patches, almost imagistic, which pay a feeble lip service to the not so distant past when we had smatterings of scrub forest in the area. There are solitary trees and beaten down bushes by the pathsides and field embankments. It is enough to leave me bemused.

In future, the things will take a shape when even these trees that can be counted on fingers will be viewed as forests of the past. Gladly there are still many birds left and their calls somehow sound reassuring. As the battering ram goes estranging itself from the roots that have supported its evolution and growth, tottering and honking menacingly, spewing out darker and darker parables, the songs of the birds still hold feeble musical threads linking our imperiled existence to the divine melody emanating from a distant corner in the universe.

I spot an Indian roller, a striking Cambridge-and-Oxford-blue bird. It was obdurately peeking into a bush from an electricity wire, its biggish head tilted at an angle, just about to pounce upon some frog or lizard. It batters the prey on some nearby branch to have a nice supper. The colorful bird gives an assortment of extolling, raucous chuckles and croaks. It’s very volatile in proposing to its remote and cold love interest. It’s a very indulgent courtship—a spectacular display involving nose-diving and somersaulting while letting out grating harsh screams. It seems to possess a pretty informed attitude. Well, you see a beautiful bird and it seems all isn’t lost yet.

Till a decade back there was a sort of wasteland stretching for about hundred acres in this area. It presented a beautiful landscape picture entirely modeled by the untamed forces of nature. I remember wandering around in that pleasant desolation. It was a wonderfully sublime feeling there. That small world of little insects, rodents and reptiles had its very own gleaming myths and anecdotes for this small-time writer. During the monsoons it would turn into a little marshland. It further accentuated the isolation treasured in its little bushy coffers. The water wouldn’t dry before the spring or sometimes even till early summer. Thousands of birdie guests displayed their adventurous quirks. What a high-pitched quacking thoroughfare it used to be!

The human population grew further and the jabbering human hands arrived to cut these last tufts of hair left on the balding head of mother nature. The pressure on the farmlands grew manifold. The low-lying area was filled with earth. Its level was raised to meet our ever-increasing demands from the cropped land to meet the perennial shortage of produce from the farms. Now the lashing raindrops just fill the furrows in the cropped fields and gone are the little ponds and puddles.

A couple of years back there still were the last remains of that scrub forest. It was a little patch of roughly three acres left out as the remnant of the fledgling wasteland of yore. A few dozen ducks and cormorants swam in its languid waters. A few waders were busy on its grassy banks.

Come now to the present. A netting has been set up above the water. The human heart seems to be possessed by the spirit of a licentious hyena that forces the mankind to put barb over everything on the earth to nail down all fellow claimants to resources on the planet. These are imprisoned waters, denied to the birds. The wires shine under the sun with beguiling perspectives, drawing a kind of superfluous resonance in the air that claws down all softer emotions with its unsentimental tautness. So we have fisheries even here in this tiny bowl of a pond. The deadly strings over it would cut down the wings of the transgressors.

There seems to be an overdose of humanity. There are no more any winged guests from the Himalayas. A lone common teal is wading through the sullen waters. A morose kingfisher vainly ogles into the muddled depth from an electricity line. Is it free to dive? Diving into the barbed waters would mean the beautiful bird itself turning into a prey, suddenly catapulted from its status of predator a moment before. There are no foragers on the banks. There is just a greater coucal sneaking among the bushes looking for eggs in little nests. What a decline in a decade—from thousands to dozens to a common teal. I’m sure the next year even this singular common teal will also be gone. There will be more people, more enterprise.

The silence around me is imbued with a sense of loss. I can vividly see the piteous corrosion of wilderness around me. The human juggernaut is plonking ahead with a sure-footed assertiveness. It hammers home the point of human triumph and majestically ticks off the last lines of natural defense that raise its challenge on the way. The sweeping fury of a brutal landscape startles me and I take hasty steps to further explore some untamed corner in the countryside.

Autumnal Nostalgia

 Just watch out the lilaceous glow on people's faces. It will tell you that winter has just starting spraying its aura around. November is cool. Forget all talks of global warming, pollution, dirty political thuggeries, traffic jams, and disappointments on cricketing field. The weather in November puts the common man, the man in the arena of trials and tribulations of saving some grace to see through the day with life intact, on a strong wicket. The glow on common man is just like that witnessed by numerous faces after witnessing yet another century by Sachin.

Delhi is chaotic. But have a round of Connaught Place (thankfully the colonnaded facades are up for some renovation) and you will feel the historical smartness still pervading in smoky, hazy afternoons slowly passing into the folds of evening. Just go there with an accommodating spirit and you will find why despite so many metropolitan outcrops around, Connaught Place is still the heart of Delhi. In the fantastic maze turned up by the white colonnaded blocks time, history, modernity all stand captured in a mysteriously pervading easiness.

Elsewhere, you will find four causes to mutter for a single cause of musing. Metro, yes...a massive collective reason for a bigger musing. Flyovers....again do us proud as we saunter over without wasting any time. But have the eyes to spot dirt cheap humanity scattered around below the flyovers. Kids, women, men....black, filthy, sick, torn and tattered dreams wander in equal measure. These poor human souls left out of the gift of enjoying even the balmy effects of early winter. Take a deep look in the eyes of some young female beggar, and you will find a big chance for a beautiful life and persona wasted. Whom to blame?? I just look at the faceless vault of sky and ask again and again, "Why?" If you can give so much to so few, then why not just common minimum for all of us!!! Anyway, disparities have teased us from times unknown. And will continue for, God forbid, as long as we are slogging out for more and more. Still early message put out by early winter is cool enough to assuage all such heartburns.

A lonely honeybee

I’m turning soil around the crown-of-thorn cactus. It has shed most of its leaves under the onslaught of cold in January. Its thorns look sturdier and more prominent now without the leaves. The thorns are impassive to weather—spring and autumn are the same, as are the winters and summers. However, even during the coldest overcast days, the hardy plant didn’t completely lose its smile. The thorns may carry the shades of conservatism and some tinkle of metallic weight on their pointed ends but the flowers have innate, vivid bond with the vibrant most spring somewhere in a distant, virginal vale. There are more flowers than the leaves; bright red little round flowers and silvery fangs of thorns—the defenders of beauty, or say the flowery son of god on the crucifix. They prove their status. They mean their job really well. I get a slight scratch at the back of my hand, not deep enough to draw blood, but strong enough to leave a scratch mark. Maybe they intend to prick me very softly.

There is a lone honeybee on a flower on the thorny plant. I hope it’s not a castaway or someone who has lost the way to the new home. Or maybe even too nostalgic one who hasn’t been able to leave the little yard of a lonesome writer, almost redundant and nameless himself, where there are some flowers and a few small trees. I see a few more honeybees. Are these few remaining honeybees the ones who were accidently left behind and now can’t make a way back to the new home?

Partings and relocations aren’t without their sad chimings altogether. But as they say, change is the perennial law. They have enough reasons in the survival book to move on. They are possessed with a free, itinerant spirit. They aren’t merely potted flowers at my mercy. They are alive and independent. I hope their dormant bond with my little garden will be revived. I look forward to their—the parent beehive—arrival during the monsoon season. I hope they will have plenty of cheerful, amusing travelogues to share with me through their buzzing wings once they arrive. 

An abandoned beehive in the garden

 Natural honey is a precious thing these days and the honey-loving eagle is also rare. It’s a little, poignant tussle between two rarities, a kind of unrelenting oscillation between despair and hilarity. The honey-buzzard returned the next day as well. It seems almost destitute and runaway, so few of them are left after all. It took a big slice. It’s a lucrative trip but it chronicles an irony as well. There are so few beehives and the honey buzzard’s beakful of takeaway seems like the sadistic savor of a glutton. The honeybees belong to the little garden and hence to me it looks a deplorable act by the eagle. There I stand in the melded eerie of reason and emotions. The reason pardoning the eagle and the emotions feeling the loss incurred by the bees. Great is the winged hunter’s predatory dive and equally great is the bees’ craftsmanship and the alchemy of transforming pollen into nectar. The bees so homely and the eagle seems so distant, weird and peripatetic.

There I stand with my dystopian look, skeptical oeuvre, hasty impetus and restless impulses. Primarily our attitude between a loss and a new beginning is shabby and provisional. Our thoughts febrile and random. The sense of loss is hundred times palpable than any other effect of any consequence born of our efforts. From the ramparts of my fortified illusions, the house of bees seems in tatters. But the bees hardly suffer from the effects of simple happenings that we perceive as haunting mirages of loss and agony. So while I stand morose and disheveled, they show painterly aesthetics to draw new lines on the endless canvas. And with a fledgling and buzzing sense of duty, they make a new beginning. They understand that it is the time to move. Their take on life and living is beyond mere commodification of one’s efforts. Moving on without any grudges is an inseparable part of their nature.

I’m but caught in my mundane and superfluous catalogues. Something is missing from the yard. It’s a sad sight to look at the empty hive. With an irreducible sense of duty, a few of them are still busy in taking away the last remaining granules of nectar. A nostalgic winding-up of affairs. I’m sure they will have more pollen somewhere with the spring coming and many flowers blooming with vivid full smile. I hope they will return with the onset of monsoons on a luminous day. In fact, they come every year. But there is something missing. The abandoned hive is just three or four feet above my head when I stand under the curry patta tree. I used to be welcomed by soft wafting smell of honey as and when I passed under it. It’s always a sad sight to look at an empty house, the house that was so alive with activity till a day back. 

Freedom

 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 spiritual Masters in spiritual 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 as the thinker of freedom and ultimate liberation kept talking about 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 judgement 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. Like 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 thoroughfair. 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 sadhaks, take your nectar, and flip 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, 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 swordish wife

 Bunna has an avant-garde, sharp-edged wife. He has been a withdrawn youth but at last fate has feted him with an instrument to beat his brooding self trapped inside a recalcitrant persona. He is safely drafted into matrimony, having hit the jackpot to get a wife at last. There is no scope for any sort of discontentment now as long as there is a wife. So now as a young man, looking for the satiation of the customary desire, he easily gets what he needs at this stage of life. These are bewitching days suffused with enchantment of flesh. Life seems a cakewalk with varied compilation of the much-touted sense pleasure; a kind of true-to-life tenderness blooming like lotus among the mud of tyranny and suffocation.

Mostly all relationships carry love-hate shades. Apart from the usual recreations and raptures, his wife’s requirements but cover a broader horizon. She is very quick to hit the belligerent trajectory. She sandblasts her husband, so much so that hers is a legend-spinning persona in the neighborhood. Although evocative and vivid in her fun-games with her husband, she scratches his face and spits at him when she suffers from the fits of her volcanic temper.

He is receptive to all this with a wobbly cuteness. He carries an ironic, wispy half-smile. As she gallantly takes a crushing grip at the last traces of his freedom, he coolly bears all this, knowing fully well that this is the investment he has to commit in lieu of all that he needs. In fact, he considers himself lucky to have a wife. He is the only one fortunate enough to get a wife among three brothers. He is wise and understands that if he reacts, on the spur of an anarchist moment, his grip on matrimonial pleasure may be gone with an extraordinary twinkle. So he is joyously yoked into the affair with a womanly compliance. I find him pretty strong willed in this, a sort of strong-charactered guy who is compellingly consistent in his demeanor. 

He works in a needle-making factory. It’s a very careful work where you cannot afford to be in estrangement with caution even for a moment. In this way, he is completely used to needling by his perk, petite, curvaceous, young, temperamental wife. On a Sunday, he lets his guard slightly down. It’s late morning. He takes few pegs of the cheap desi liquor, offering one to his razor-sharp wife also. A romantic Bollywood song then shatters the neighborhood walls. It’s eroticizing and exoticizing romance beyond limits. The exquisite lyrics carry their sensuous notes with incorrigible loudness. The locality’s peace lies in shambles, almost in disrepair.

The frivolous notes sneak into serious corners. Someone is in the middle of an online examination going. Bunna and his sharp wife are caught in dulled, gyrating moments, as a prelude to their tumbling fight in the bed, by the complainant who arrives at the door of their small upstairs room in their tiny house. This is a clear KLPD. Her romantic energies then change to vendetta against her husband. He is sympathetic to the complaint raised by the neighbor and hence lowers the volume. Now the sizzling energies in the razor-sharp wife need an escape medium. She pounces upon her husband calling him a floundering sissy and coward who pees at the instructions of ever-exploiting neighbors. The volume of sound stays the same, as loud as earlier, just that now it’s the wife raising a storm.

A child's playmate

 Nevaan has turned a caustic interrogator now. With his little steps liberating him from childhood dependencies, he is nicely climbing up the teasing scaffolding of boyhood to further enlarge his sphere of influence. As I use the toilet, he stands outside the door and sternly asks, ‘Mama kya kar rahe ho?’ There is a weird nuance in his tone. He sounds like a policeman in this enquiry. ‘What will a person do in the loo?’ I mutter guardedly like an irritated thief in the jail. My tone is rudely soured for being asked such an obvious question. Now, they are smartphone-honed, extra-smart generation. They are discerning and insightful beyond their years. Before we realize they have already acquired critical perspectives. God forbid, if he already—just at the age of five—has some idea about the other side of the story that sometimes unfolds inside loos and bathrooms. If it’s so then it’s quite worrisome.

There is a dry, crooked branch of tree lying in a corner in the yard. With a cynical certainty, it becomes a sword, a gun, a stick, a spear, a policeman’s baton as per the role adopted by him. In all these instances, it’s a super-hero’s weapon of dispensing justice against the evil, the bad guy. No need to guess, I’m the all-bad guy, thoroughly enmeshed with thuggery, who needs a child’s weapon to mend his errant ways. My primary crime is asking him not to watch too much of cartoon programs on television. So there he is on a mission to reframe my persona into someone who is comfortable with children watching cartoon programs on television for endless hours. You can say he wants to mold me into a good guy. 

Consciousness dancing on the floor of its self-hatched realities

 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 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 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 mindwork. 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, culture, everything belonging to the blissful and agonizing maya we create. Who can stop 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 to 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 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. 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 for 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 clays 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 goaty 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. 

A layman's skirmish with mantra sadhna

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—and wore plain kurta-pyjama. So when 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 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 ‘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, already appointed himself as my future official driver once I became a district magistrate.

These days the Indian Civil Services exam has been pared 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 exam 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 marksheet. 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 a little-brained, with loads of muscles though, a 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’. 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 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 18 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 possible 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 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 taking 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.   

A rich boy's story of poverty

 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, 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 on 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.

A layman's skirmish with 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 and 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 suddenly let loose across a normal 240 watt wire. What would happen? It will heat it up, there will be sparks, and it may even burn. Similarly, human system is for 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 of 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, carrier, 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 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 Shakti pat. 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 period for me.

Shortly after his blessing touch on my head, on my Tuesday fasting 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 offering 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 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. The movement of prana channels across the body. Like serpents crawling over back and 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 significant karmic entanglements across 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 structure—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 with the other’s. 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 Kindalini 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 definitly 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 in very 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 Mahaavatar 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.

Skirmish with a sadhu

 He is a saffron clad-baba, aged around forty, swiping his wooden staff to avail a lift on some two-wheeler. He is well built and a mere look at his ears bearing glass rings makes his identity evident. He is a follower of Nath sampradaya, a follower of Baba Gorakh Nath. He couldn’t have thrown his staff in front of a more suitable vehicle. With the Baba confidently pillion riding I ask him the whereabouts of his journey.

Becoming an ascetic wasn’t his conscious choice. His parents hadn’t any child even after many years of marriage and they made a vow before the holy fire in an ashram belonging to Nath Sampradaya that if they had children with the great saint’s blessings, they will offer the first born to the sect to be raised as a complete renunciator on the path. With the great saint’s blessings they had four children and keeping their vow they offered the first born to dhoona, the holy fireplace at the ashram. Now the very same sadhu is pillion riding my bike.

He has been to all corners of India on pilgrimages and evaluates people’s worth in terms of their disposition towards kindness. The latter aptly measured in terms of their opening the purse for charity donations. These are hard times. A baba has to have something in the purse to survive because everything is monetized. Literally every breath we take seems to come at some financial cost. So this baba too is entitled to innocently covet money like all of us do. I don’t have any right to expect too many spiritual and hard-penanced elements in this baba’s life because asceticism isn’t his choice. It has been handed over to him by his parents. Thankfully he seems to have accepted his fate and doesn’t seem to hold any grudge against them for depriving him of a role on the normal worldly stage.

The crux of his philosophy that he told me can be summarized in a few lines: ‘Health is the biggest blessing a human being can possess. Health is as important to a fakir as it’s to a king. Both cannot follow their path with full commitment with ill health.’ Well, cannot agree with him more.

As he disembarks from the bike, I teasingly ask him, ‘Should I give you 100 rupees maharaj?’ As I’m drawing out my purse he comes to fresher spark of life, ‘Of course beta, of course, some chai pani!’ The major advantage of being a sanyasi is that you get entitled to call everyone a beta, anyone from newborns to centurions. He has quick eyes to scan the contents in my purse as I search for the promised 100 rupee note. The money is given. But these are hard times you know. Nothing seems sufficient, at least financially. I am expecting a smiling blessing but I find him serious and pointing to the lower side pocket of his saffron robe. The cloth is well-washed and looks quite new, not worn out at all. A bit of stitching has gone in a corner of the pocket.

‘The robe is torn beta. Baba would be pleased if you get him a new one,’ he sulks. I am about to laugh and say, ‘Baba, it just needs a stitch that would come for free, so why take the trouble of getting a new one for this.’ But I keep quite. ‘Maybe even a baba needs safe new pockets to do justice to the charity money by keeping it well guarded in sturdy pockets,’ I tease him within myself without giving any outward sign of my insights.

In any case he has decided to further lighten the weight of my purse which is already light. ‘I don’t have a clue to the price of an ascetic robe. How much do you think it costs?’ I ask him. ‘About 600 rupees!’ he tells smartly. Now I realize he has blessed the 500 rupee note in my purse by his kindly gaze and with this additional amount, apart from the one already in his grasp, the charity would match the price of a robe. I feel primarily sad at such times, if nothing else. So resignedly give into his charity-seeking enthusiasm and hand over the 500 rupee note to him. I casually look at the 100 rupee note in his hand. He instinctively puts both of them in his cloth bag as if afraid that I may ask for the smaller denomination to be returned in lieu of the bigger note.

Before I realize he has drawn something out of his pocket, grabs my hand and secretly puts something on my palm, folding his hand over my closed fist as if he has handed me the most miraculous nag mani, the gem of alchemy. ‘Keep it with you and it will save you from all dangers, make you a millionaire, make you the luckiest man on earth!’ his blessings are profuse. After all, 600 rupees in one stroke sometimes turns out to be more than the entire charity that they collect in a week. Most probably I have just contributed to his ganja smoke at the most.

I am about to burst out with laughter at his blessed gem but to help him assume that I’m in awe of his blessing I keep silent. It’s a five-mukhi rudraksh bead, that too a fake one, most probably. But to make him happy I keep it in my pocket. I have no reason to be angry at him. I cannot hold too lofty spiritual expectations from him because the path isn’t born of his conscious choice. He was just pushed into it, like most of teeming millions that we see robed in ascetic cloths across India.

He is still speaking and before I hear some other financial plan for the upkeep of his saintly ways I shoot away like a rocket. He was still speaking while I sped away. I don’t know why but I rode pretty fast after that. Maybe it was the reaction of my subconscious mind for losing some money because money has turned out to be as dear as life these days.

He was practical enough to ask my name and the village of my residence. ‘I will pay a visit to your nagri,’ I heard him shouting as I sped away. Most probably he finds me someone who is simpleton enough whose purse can be opened with the slightest effort. But he is grossly mistaken on this. I am happy to contribute to his ganja smoke once but if he commits the mistake of following my track to my village for further ganja doses then the baba will be trouble.

Here is my plan of action if he is unlucky enough to follow the foolish scheme: I will welcome him at my place, offer him water, serve him tea and ask for food if he is hungry. And the moment he demands money—which he would most probably—I would produce the fake rudraksh bead asking for full refund.

That night when I went to bed I had a hearty laugh: ‘I bought a fake rudraksh bead for 600 rupees. Imagine my lack of business sense and with that sense I once—height of heights—explored the possibility of turning a businessman and scouted some countries in Africa, central Asia and eastern part of Asia.’ The plan lightened my pockets to almost perfect weightlessness. But this reflection at least assuaged those mild bruises of losses whose pinch I feel sometimes during nostalgic moments. No point in going into that all. That’s all the normal stuff as it happens to most of the people. Nothing exceptional about that. But the baba has to be careful. Very careful.

Skirmish with a ghost

 I’m just a passing phenomenon. At the quantum level I have no boundaries. At the level of microscopic particles, the smallest that we have spotted till now with our instruments, I’m merely and assemblage of spark; I’m just a boundary-less conglomeration of tiniest sparks amidst the same going around me. Now the question arises who am I. I consider myself as a part of this overall conglomeration of tiniest energy sparks that has identified with certain characteristics to automatically spin out a certain pattern in the energetic conglomeration to manifest at the level of body, my thoughts, emotions, circumstances.

Human body is a far-far short-lived phenomenon than we consider. Each cell in our body vibrates with millions of transitional movements each second. A massive force of change at the core of our assemblage whose effects we feel in the form of changing thoughts, passing emotions, shifting perspectives, fluctuating views and more. That means I’m just an energy field with certain predominant proclivities that is being—always—cut through other energy fields that are floating around, or I am passing through them.

From here arises the concept of getting affected by entities, disembodied souls and all the scary world of ghosts and ghouls. All these are mere symbolic representations of the energy fields that leave effect on us, somehow interfere with our cellular and molecular structure, the energy assemblage that we consider ourselves to be us. Their manifestations in our system are in proportion to our own pain, suffering and fears. It’s just a synchronicity with that particular frequency. Of course a field of pain and suffering would look anchor point in a similar pool of energy. Then there are stories about their weird, fearsome shapes and appearances. Their nasty appearance is an assemblage of our own pain and suffering and fears. We generate a reality according to our imaginative fears. I have no doubts some people see such fearsome, weird shapes but these are mere the impressions of their own fears, augmented by the foreign energy field of pain that is passing through them at the moment, created on the screen of sense-perception.   

Some say that most of the thoughts and emotions passing in us aren’t our own. They are triggered by entities. That’s plain and simple crap. They are simply responses and reactions born of what my energy and cellular arrangement—which I consider to be me—in overlapping with other arrangements (bodily visible or not) as I walk on the stage of life. This is inevitable. That’s how it is, because at the quantum level I have no boundary as such and one part will mix and come into contact with the other with as much naturality as one portion of air is always passing through other portions all the time. So my thoughts and emotions are my own, be that due to the passing of any type of energetic pattern (aligning with me or not) through the quantum space that looks like my body at the level of normal sense perception. How will your bubble stay aloof and untouched by all that is floating around you as you move on the journey? Put your body under the most capable microscope and it will show you as an assemblage of subatomic sparks surrounded by similar twinklings. So my thoughts and my emotions are my own, just a stimuli to the vastness surrounding me. It simply cannot be otherwise. So take ownership for what goes inside you. As a conscious maker of your circumstances, some meaning out of this utmost meaninglessness around, the onus is on us to manage our thoughts and emotions. The talks of tantra and ghosts seem fascinating. Very interesting like a movie. Enjoy them but don’t give it undue importance. It is a merely a symbolic representation of the interaction of varying patterns of energy that happens by default because there are no boundaries among various parts at the quantum level.

My own experience in this domain happened about 15 years back. I worked in corporate at that time and stayed on the outskirts of Delhi. It was a small two-storeyed house with some open wooded lot on one side and an abandoned house on the other. I was a regular worshipper of Mahakali at that time. My mother had prepared very sweet beshan laddoos for me. I was on cloud nine with soft emotions for someone and was on a late night call with the symbol of that affection. I was leaning against the parapet wall facing that abandoned house and eating the sugary laddoo. All smiles and laughter and goodie feelings, unbothered of the time and place. It was midnight, exact zero hour as my neighboring bunch of boys would tell me later. Well, eating sugary laddoo at midnight leaning over the wall looking over an abandoned house where someone had committed suicide. This statement didn’t mean anything to me prior to the experience. I wasn’t aware of the time, about sugary sweetmeat, about the suicide in the abandoned house. I didn’t know anything about it. Who would be bothered about normal worldly crap when he is on a late night call with someone special?

I was grinning, like a horse, with the solace of the sweetest emotions and lots of sugar in me, one big laddoo already in me and the other half-eaten held in my hand and the time midnight. My horse-grin stopped suddenly. There was a buzzing humming vibration in the air around and I distinctly felt something colliding into me. As if something entered from the back. It was so impactful at the normal perception level that I instinctively straightened up as if someone had pushed a force against my back. The outside agent was so palpable as to trigger a panic reaction immediately. All love was kicked away. By instinct Mother Mahakali’s name surfaced on my lips and hurriedly I came down. There I was lying on my bed, my neighbors, all nice gentle boys from Bihar, surrounded and looking at me with concern. ‘Bhaiyaa are you mad! Eating laddoo at midnight! The abandoned house by our side has a history of suicide,’ Radhe, the gentlest of them, was much worried. Faith is always stronger than any fear. I was a pretty serious worshipper of Mahakali at that time. So I was perfectly normal after that initial trigger of fear. I was joking, laughing, giving them a live commentary about how does it feel to have a ghost inside one’s body.  

It was quite an experience. That particular build-up of energy (which still spun around the cosmos with its pain and suffering after unnaturally shedding the body) cascaded around my system for around half an hour. It was quite a force, moving like tidal waves from head to tail, and then moving up again, as if scanning each part of me for some solace, some synchronicity with its own structure of pain. I could feel my body getting heated up from inside but there wasn’t any sweating. I gave a live commentary of all this with my share of jokes injected in between. Then the poor energetic structure of pain moved on. Maybe it found my jokes offensive. The moment it left me I could distinctly declare that I’m ghost-free. There was jubilation among the group of boys. They really respected me as an elder brother, worked in call centers and more than salary considered girlfriends as the main incentive for staying in stinking Delhi for the pittance of a salary. I would pay for the kitchen purchases and in return I would have home-cooked food with lots of respect. So they danced and we raised a toast to our victory over the ghost. Sorry to disappoint my well-wishers who consider me to be a teetotaler but I have tasted liquor on special occasions and beating a ghost was one such occasion, so we all had couple of moderate pegs each during our post-midnight celebrations. I have experienced all that is good and bad in life. Maybe mother existence wants to keep me level headed and not get egoistic about my purity which is the lighter version of addiction, addiction to one’s good image. Luckily, most of the people consider me a good man.  

And what about the ghost? And midnight? And the sugary laddoo? Well, of course when someone unnaturally exits the portals of life with so much pain as in a suicide, the bundle of energy spins around looking for succor, and some of us come across this part of air that obviously passes through our system, simply because we don’t have boundaries at the quantum level. It’s a houseless traveller looking for alleviation of its pains and gropes around for some anchor support. It feeds on our fear and frustrations. But I believe more in being receptive to saintly energy fields passing through me. To make the negative energy fields ineffective against my house, my cellular structure, is the main domain of creation with volition and effort. That is what making one’s destiny is all about. To be a good manager of one’s own—again I emphasize these are our own, so no point in relegating them to the imposition from the entities—thoughts and emotions. What about sugar and ghosts? Again a very simple scientific explanation. Maybe the sudden bombardment of sugar in the system leaves the cells—and the quantum field around them—flummoxed, lazy, or overburdened, or some other tizzying thing, making them more prone to the entering energy field where it can penetrate a bit deeper into the system to impose its pain and suffering into our system, triggering a manifestation of fear, agonies and suffering analogous to those witnessed by the carrier entity. What about midnight and ghosts? Well, most of us have our most optimum time and circumstances to be most effective. Light is healing and divinity. Darkness is chaos and pain. Maybe the energy system of pain operates at its optimum level in the absence of light.

Jai Mahavatar Babaji! As I write this his big kindly eyes look at me from the picture that I have affixed on the wall. He is guiding me at the moment. It’s my truth at the moment. And who knows Babaji pushed a portion of his divine persona in my direction triggering a chain of thoughts early in the morning. Let’s smile, laugh and make the most of this phenomena that we understand to be our individual life. And consciously take ownership of our own thoughts and emotions, manage them in a way that we are more open to love and grace of the saintly energies and get free of fear from the bundles of pain spinning around.                                                               

The snaky history of a tiny locality

 Tau Tarif Singh, drawing lineage from my great granduncle, was a small man with a huge well-composed demeanor. Very gentle in behavior, soft with words and peaceful in movements, he hardly created any ripples on the stage of life with his presence. There was an exception though. There would be a complete reversal of his persona at the sight of a snake. He would be filled with lightening agility and within the flash of a second he would run after the helpless reptile, hold it by the tail, swing it around in a highly technical way and bang it on the ground with such force that it would make a second strike almost redundant.

Let him see a snake at his house, in the locality, in the village, in the fields or open grounds or even a forest he won’t miss an opportunity to culminate its journey on earth. His biggest feat was holding two snakes by their tails simultaneously and swinging in his special way and banging them on the ground to finish their journey. Surprisingly he was never bitten in the task. To this day I wonder why would such a peaceful and calm person turn into a snake-annihilator at the mere sight of the poor reptile. Maybe some karmic entanglement with snakes; possibly Tau was a mongoose, a peacock or a garuda in his previous birth and his evolution into a different species still retained the predominant animosity against snakes.

From the village standards, Grandfather was a reasonably educated man. He was in love with mathematics and that helped him in calculating things with logic without getting clouded by unnecessary emotions. Grandmother was very tart with her tongue and he matched her in the matrimonial equation with the agility of his hardworking hand. Their domestic life, like any other farmer couple, was defined by these skirmishes between the female tongue and the male hand. But she died quite young leaving Grandfather’s hands free to engage in more suitable occupations. Grandfather was neutral to snakes. ‘One has to kill them if they sneak into the house, but one shouldn’t bother about them in the open,’ he maintained. His closest encounter with a snake happened when he was around eighty. He was still active in farming till then. It was evening and he was lying in the field, his headgear bunched under his head and one leg raised in the middle and the other supporting on the other knee. He was smoking a little hookah, his head tilted to one side to draw smoke. Another farmer was sitting nearby. A black snake chose to keep its way straight, instead of taking a detour. Grandfather’s head was tilted in the other direction. The other farmer saw it when it had already crept up to Grandfather’s stomach. Then Grandfather’s mathematical logic worked to save him from a snakebite. He turned a stone, didn’t move at all and allowed the entire length of the fearsome snake to creep over him. After that Grandfather took the longest draught at hookah in his life. ‘I have never seen so much of smoke coming out of me in my entire life,’ he told me later. ‘She was your wife who came to scare you for all your agility with your hands,’ the other farmer joked.

Father was a philosophical man. He could talk better than anyone I have ever heard in my life. His was a world of books. He wasn’t bothered much about worldly affairs. He was an athletic man and could have been at least a national level player if things had gone well. He was brainy enough to be a senior bureaucrat if things had taken a sympathetic turn for him. His oratory would have made him a famous politician if things had happened as they usually happen in the life of a successful man. But none of these happened and he was contended to be a governmental servant with hundreds of books and a philosophical mind. As the family patriarch he had to take the responsibility of killing a big-hooded cobra that had crept into the cattle barn. Mother raised a hue and cry and before Father could realize anything she had handed him a stick to make him realize his worldly duties. Father killed that big snake. I was very small at that time. And the very next day as I scampered around to play in the street I fell headlong and my forehead hit the sharp edge of a brick leaving me all bloody. I still carry the mark. ‘I hit the cobra’s hood and see the karma comes back in the form of this injury on my son’s forehead,’ Father drew his philosophical reasoning.

The biggest cobra that I have ever seen being killed also needs an account here. It was a moonlit night and a majestic cobra sneaked into the locality. The village was pretty open till then. A horse panicked and neighed a warning. The dogs barked. By chance, there were all children and female onlookers at that time. The stick was handed over to the only grown up male available. Dheere cowered with the stick. He was—sadly—nicknamed Langda because his one leg was incapacitated because of polio. Dheere struck quite forcefully, missed the mark and his crippled leg lost footing and he fell down with the strike. But after that he regained composure and somehow managed to beat the entire ground with almost a hundred strikes in rapid-fire and by chance one of the strikes hit the cobra in the middle injuring it, cutting its movements and then the striker had it easy.

My own quota in the sins against the snakes involves killing two harmless little common wolf snakes that had entered our house and my panicked mother handed over the responsibility to me as the new family patriarch. I performed the job with shaking legs. The other partnership in crime occurred when I held the torch and my uncle pounded a harmless rat snake. Yet another time, I firmly held a torch as my younger brother killed a poisonous krait snake that had crept into the garden at night. Kraits usually crawl out in the dark so one has to be careful about them. They aren't too big and can hide in little spaces coiling themselves in a distinct manner and that makes them more dangerous than a cobra. Cobras are full of attitude and don't believe in stealth fight. They would hiss and raise hood to warn you beforehand. Other battles against snakes involved throwing pebbles at the harmless water sakes in the village pond. They would dive playfully and would emerge at a distance. That was quite a fun for both the parties. I remember once I was walking on my little legs on the playground outside the village. It was a faint foot trail in the little grass. A cobra was also enjoying its walk on the same trail from the opposite direction. It stood its ground, maybe finding me small enough to turn a bully. It stood its ground, raised it hood to full spread and warned me to get off the way from a distance. I took to my heels and watched from a distance. Male cobra is arrogant I have heard. There it passed following the foot trail. I remember once me and my younger brother were playing hide and seek in a ruined abandoned house in the village. Its roof had caved in and one wall fallen leaving it open on one side. As we stepped there a big yellow rat snake got scared. Since there was only one opening all three of us were running in the same direction. Indian rat snakes are quite big and lengthy and that makes them quite scary. But they are harmless and mostly get killed because of their similarity to cobra. At that young age a snake was just a snake and I can still remember that nightmare after all these decades. 

Now I’m more balanced and logical in my approach to snakes. I can at least marvel at the crawling majesty of snakes that I come across in my solitary walks in the countryside. They are just creatures like any other creature. In the Delhi NCR there are just two poisonous snakes—out of the forty species found in the area—named Indian cobra and krait. The rest are harmless long earthworms and get unnecessarily killed because of our natural instinctive fears. Knowledge is empowering. It dispels darkness. So now I am more adjusting to their presence.

Kaka Maharaj, who stays in a hut by the canal outside the village, has so many snakes around but this isn’t an issue at all with him. There is a clump of banana trees just by his hut. Once as I approached to pay him a visit I saw a cobra basking in the sun. It scampered into the clump of trees when I arrived. I told about the naga to Kaka Maharaj. ‘This land is for all and everything,’ is all he said. After our talks on the matters of spirituality I saw him stepping into the clump of banana trees to take out a basket he had hung on a frond. He went in quite naturally. He had even forgotten that I had told him about a snake there.

There is mother nature’s little air purifier just in front of our place. It’s a dense clump of trees and vines and lots of undergrowth. Aren’t these green leaves an extension of our lungs. But people take nature for granted and hardly anyone speaks in favor of these green tissues of our lungs. People usually complain of a couple of cobras that stay here. A few sightings and people go paranoid. If you see a snake in the open, don't worry it won't run after you to bite. Rest assured it has far better things to bite for its benefit. 

Almost every other day someone is raising a hue and cry about their sighting by our yard walls. The gate is open with grilled portion on the underside. They can easily creep in. The night is theirs to creep. They are all welcome. But the day is mine. They have no business to be in during the day. They haven’t bothered me so far, so why should I bother about them. Why stretch your fears beyond a point. Just be careful a bit more, that’s all. Use torch while moving in the dark. Walk gently to allow them to creep away as you approach. And they eat mice with relish. The area is almost mouse-free. And mother nature knows more than us. There were mice that’s why there are snakes. And to ensure that the snakes don't crawl at each human step there are plenty of peacocks doing the rounds. They must be eating many little snake hatchlings to keep the number finely balanced. But who is there to keep a check on us? In our case only we can do it, individually and collectively.