Santim recalls the evening whence he was not sure if he had been sleeping or awake and heard these voices :
Give me Life, Lord.
[and what will you do if you are given one?]
I want to breathe, experience humanity. I want to taste its joys, sorrows, pain, happiness and all that temporal experiences that is called “life on earth”.
I want to know what is eating, sleeping, growing up and then dying.
[Are you sure?]
I am sure that is what I want. I will be good and I will not cause any mischief on your Earth. For sure I will take good care of earth which will be my mother while I am alive.
[You speak of things that you know not]
I mean these things. Just give a chance. Give me life – any life. I want to taste it.
[You will not want the pain and you will be intoxicated with the joys. You will reject a complete life]
NO. For sure I wont. I know that both pain and joy is life. If it is life that I want, I must want both these things. I will learn from both. I will not get intoxicated by joy and depressed by the pain. I know none of them are permanent. So, please give me Life.
[You will want to cling on to life]
Ha ha. NO. No way. Life is transient and I know it is transient. I will not be illogical to want to pretend what is transient is permanent. As I grow up in life, I will prepare myself for giving it up.
[You speak of things that you know not]
Trust me, I know these things. I just want to taste life. I promise I will live life to the fullest by appreciating everything life has to offer. I will share my joys with others and share their pain. I will praise the Lord by making sure others can taste the greatness of His Creation.
[You will be arrogant and possessive.]
Impossible! How can I ever be arrogant when I as baby will have to be fed and tend for by another human? So, too in old age or sickness. I will be forever humbled by the forces for nature and my limited knowledge of the secrets of life.
I will never be possessive when I know nothing really belongs to me but is on loan from mother earth. I will not be happy when other has none. So, please give me life.
[You will destroy and kill earth and all that you come into contact with. You will upset the balance of nature]
No. No. I will not. How could I destroy when it will be mother earth that will provide for my sustenance on earth? I will leave behind my mark of contribution to mother earth – as a gratitude for sustaining me on earth.I will respect all the other men and women, the flora and the fauna, the seas and the mountains, the animals and all creatures. Trust me and give me Life.
How could I ever kill when it is Life that I want for myself? I am propagating Life and not Death. So give me a body and give me Life.
[You will cause dissension and disunity among your own species]
No, please I will never do that. I will remind myself and others that the body is just a vessel to travel on earth. It is not the real “I” or “them”. I know that whatever the colour of the skin, biologically we all of the same species. I will make sure we all will stick together like a herd of elephants. We will not fight each other. We will help each other. We will not create labels to disunite. Please give me a chance – give me Life.
[You speak of things that you know not]
[Be that as it may, you are hereby given life and shall suffer the consequences of your request. Upon your first breath as you leave the comfort of your mother’s womb, this conversation shall be erased from your memory. You shall live a life on earth and shall die on earth. Life shall you taste as you write the script from your own hands]
Cobwebs.That always comes to Santim’s mind whenever he falls into a state of helplessness.There are moments in his life which seem to overwhelm him and weaken his spirit. Very small, delicate but powerful moments.
There was a time when his business was bad. No customers walked into his shop for 5 months. He panicked. He suffered anxiety which in turn gave him back aches and stiff necks. As a result of this, he was almost immobilized and could not concentrate on his shop. He has his mother, his wife, his children and his 5 staff to feed! Without customers walking in, there is no money. His business was undergoing a challenging moment. Like most human beings, he has allowed the challenging moment to grow into a bigger problem by his mind – worrying.
“There is no problem that you cannot walk away from.
You remain because you choose to.
Most of the time, opportunities appear in the disguised garb of problems”.
He recalls these words he has heard somewhere. He recalls how he cried when he was a 3 year old boy struggling to put on his shoes until his mother had to help him out. And for weeks thereafter he was upset that he couldn’t do it by himself. He had even felt that his mother had taken away his glory by helping him out. There were many moments in his childhood where he had experienced what he thought were insurmountable problems…only to grow up and realize that they were opportunities for growing up.
Many years of blissful existence, we bat not an eyelid, but come one stormy night and we………question the Supreme One?.
Without money, he could only see unhappiness around him. It is moments like these which make him suddenly aware that his business all the while was sent to him by some Supreme Force. He just opened his shop and waited. And for some reason, the Supreme Force has now decided that he should go through this period - a break.He could either worry or know that there is a reason for this break and it certainly cannot be a “punishment period” in the normal sense of the word.
One way of taking out a seed stuck in a choking 6 year old boy is to invert him upside down and pressing his chest hard. Painful experience for the boy.Are we punishing him? If it was so, then almost all medical procedures are punishment”.
People are different. Nature behaves in one way. Humans think in a totally different way.You are born an Indian because you are born in the manner you are born and people call you Indian. The same with the English, Chinese, Austrian, and so on. People give labels to make sense of the world. That’s fine. What cannot be fine is when they take the labels to be Truths of their illusions. The Truth is that all are humans – creation of the Supreme. It is the height of human arrogance to insist on the illusion as the Truth. And there are just too many illusions which we have created. So used to them, we cannot tell the difference.
Labels begin with the noble aim of assisting communication
But end up enslaving humans
And become the cause of mischief and misery
And the immortality of illusions.
White or black. Brown or yellow.A yellow child has all the disadvantages which a brown child does not in a brown community. A Brown child is placed third class in a yellow community. This is determined by the adult of the yellow and brown community. Adults are very often not wise.
The Truth is:
All grow old, and few grow up.
Often, the lines of aging are mistaken for signs of wisdom.
Drunk with illusion they act against Nature’s determination. Solidarity, brotherhood, community – clever ways of the devil to ostracise humans from humanity! Santim wonders, can we not let what is just be?
In a human community, it does not matter if you are yellow, brown, white or black
For that is nature’s determination.
All of you are subject to the same natural laws.
An All Forgiving Merciful Supreme One cannot be “punitive” on his weak servants. Many a time, what we consider as “punishments” are nothing more than guidance and re-alignment of our selves because He loves us. Often, we need to be realigned because we seem to have drifted away from the Path. If we are not realigned, we remain on the off-road and forever we are lost. He realigns those He pleases and leaves those astray whom He pleases on the off-road.
Santim walks around his shop, looking up at his favorite corner. He saw an insect stuck to the cobweb and the spider casually moving towards it. The flimsiest of home, and yet a death trap for the insect. Flimsy as it is, the cobweb traps food for the spider and is a home for the spider to feel safe. In nature, strength is not measured in terms of steels and bars as we often do. Steels and bars can never “break” water. Throw steel into water and it drowns. These are nature’s ways which we never took the time to understand. Such is the way of the Supreme One, if only we understand.
But what need is for the mortal who has been given temporary pleasure on earth to understand the Supreme when he thinks he is a “supremo” on earth?
Santim realizes that thoughts of flimsiness and weakness, solidness and strength are human illusions only. Generalizations become truths in this lazy world. The easy way out is by categorization, for the sake of uniformity and control. In the name of uniformity, we sacrifice Truths at our own peril. Unable to manage diversity, we attempt to impose uniformity in futility. After a while, we tend to become what others say we are and we live a life which our soul is not meant to be. The community garlands us for our evil transformation – the perpetuation of the Illusion.
When the body walks this life in the opposite direction to the journey of the soul,
the soul screams and there is no peace!
Look at the world
Is there real peace????
The cobweb is a constant reminder to Santim that the Supreme One’s language is not merely written in some published book but in the Book of Nature. The Book of Nature is the most glaring but the least read. Nature does not have to operate in the way we understand it. It is our ignorance and arrogance that demands nature to abide to our wishes. We cannot rewrite nature. It is written. Be and it is..
Fools think that by removing the mountain and placing it elsewhere, they have rewritten Nature. The mountain is but a minute part of Nature. The whole Balance is the Nature. Human can never rewrite the whole Balance. Hence, when you tamper with part of nature, you unleash the wrath of Nature in your way. Soon, you shall know if you do not know already!
Each tampering with nature is the expedition of our own destruction.
We, therefore, destroy ourselves with our own hands.
Santim recalls, somewhere it is written that the devil was cast out of the Garden due to his arrogance. Instead of submitting to the Supreme One’s grand Plan, he wanted to improvise and judge. He had his own ideas contrary to what was in Nature. He could not let what is, be. He cannot accept. In futility, he is doomed to proof the validity of his invalid ideas. Likewise today, acceptance of what is, is condemned as passive. One cannot see the dynamism of acceptance. Refusal to accept is rebellion. Rebellion is the cause of internal chaos, the birthplace of the Ego. I am the “I”. It is the “I” that must be seen and heard.
Desires and Egos
The inspiration to move in the direction of the illogical, the impossible,
the fire of hell.
Hell and heaven is more than a word. It is more than a concept. Many go through it in this lifetime and many others keep thinking that it is only a place somewhere in the Otherland. It is an experience. You write it in your script of life as you live every second. You ignite the fire and you plant the flowers. You. Both can be addictive and habitual. Intense anger and hatred burns up the chest like a fire raging within. Giving and loving brings forth the smell of the flowers in the Garden of heaven.
A heart full of unconditional love,
Unjudging,
Accepting,
Is a garden of peace – heaven.
Many utter the belief of the Supreme One on their tongues and yet do not understand unconditional love. They actively deprive others what they want plentiful for themselves.
And what love have you when you deprive the child who is not of your tribe?
And being so, you call yourself a servant of the Supreme One?
Rejecting heaven here, have you in the Otherland?
Being a fool trapped in your illusory body,
you have yet to understand the language of the Supreme One.
Santim Raj, we saw earlier is a wanderer after his own soul. That was in the initial period of his journey. He was wandering after his own soul while his soul was doing its own wandering as was meant to be.The time will come when his wandering and the wandering of his soul would meet at the confluence of understanding – that state of true peace, true existence. Until that confluence is reached, he is destined to be confronted with the duality of his existence – his and his soul’s[1].
He remembers the dream he had. The dream that taught him the fruits of his mind and the fruits of his heart. The mind, a gift from the Supreme, which directs and redirects his very understanding of the creations around him. The heart, yet another gift, that yearns for the Truth and the light to guide him in the hour of darkness. As he basks in the happiness of his gifts, the nightmare came to him.
Everythingis but a duality but for the Supreme who is One.
The nightmare of the mind. The mind that receives and processes all that the eyes perceive and perceive not. The mind that forms a conclusion or a misperception. The mind that has been fed with the thoughts, foolish tales and silly ways of his fathers. The traps within the intricacies of the mind.
1994, they speak of computers. Garbage in, garbage out. How graciously the Supreme sent out messages to the ungrateful servants, yet they hearken not to His message. We see not the mercy of His guidance for we are more excited with the toy. Wow, this is technology! We hear, yet we listen not. We see, yet we have become blind.
Garbage in, garbage out.Truth in, Truth surround.
When are you going to stop clicking the mouse to see what message the computer is meant to relay to you?
Click, click, click all the way to grave.
And who wants to meditate on whether the food for his mind is garbage or Truth? The shield of ego and defence mechanism can only be penetrated with the needle of humility and subservience to the Supreme. The maya of results is a potent distracter, in all its forms, from the path to the Truth. And the enemy of your soul is you.[2]
The virtue is in the doing, not in the expecting. If your doing must bear the results, then you usurp the powers of the Supreme. The servant does, the Supreme dictates. You are but a minute imagination of the Supreme. Accept this or live this temporary life in futility.
The mind that focuses only on the result is prone to egoism and frustration. Achievement leads to egoism. Egoism leads to self worship. Self worship sets forth illusions of godliness, the recipe for self destruction..
Failure to achieve leads to Frustration. Frustration leads to desperation. Desperation, the opposite of patience, becomes the playground of the devil.
But the mind that forgets the objective is easily led astray, like a float on the ocean.
The mind creates and constructs and in construction it prepares the inevitable destruction of all civilization. God’s land is developed and in development, many are left without homes. Home becomes a price to be paid. An investment. Home is no longer shelter for the body but a statement of your status in life. Those who speak of the Supreme even revel in this statement. They support by their doing.
Your doing describes you clearly than a thousand words you speak. You become what you do.
The mind creates a system that purports to serve humans. It argues and it innovates. In time, the humans become slaves of the system, their new master, monster. The mind alone. The heartless mind.
We have established institutions that train the mind alone. We prioritize them. We glorify them. So can destruction be avoided by our systematic planning of the destruction itself?
The nightmare of the heart. The seat of creativity and self-nourishment. The very center of self-destruction and madness. The heart knows nothing but feelings and itself. The pure heart[3] recognizes no in betweens or half ways. It does or it doesn’t. It unleashes passion and power beyond its own control. Santim Raj remembers the death and destruction arising from his friend’s love for his beloved.
Ramana, his friend had fallen in love with Sharina. Both their parents objected to the relationship on grounds of religion, culture and race. Ramana was 26, educated, talented and holding an important position is the business industry. His parents are multi-millionaries and had he wanted, he could just live off his parents’ wealth. And even this, his parents offered him to leave Sharina. It pained his mother that he should want to marry someone alien to the culture of her forefathers.
The entire episode left his mother devastated and his father hopelessly lost. In the sadness and the humiliation her society generously placed on her, his mother died. Ramana left his home which had sheltered and loved him for 26 years to be with a stranger he has known only for 4 years.His love was blind to the sufferings he is causing around him for it yearns only the love of his beloved.
And Sharina? Her entire society was aghast that she would even consider marrying a heretic, a kafir. Her silent mother could only cry tears of begging her daughter to understand. Her father was praying to the Supreme that his daughter be saved from the raging fires of hell. And he had to do something to save his daughter’s soul, even if it means killing her if she went ahead with her blasphemous designs.
And they did. Sharina and Ramana did get married in an unconventional way in their conventional society.They had broken all norms. They have challenged all limits. They have dared to love. And yet in their love, their hearts have hardened to the yearnings of those who loved them and cared for them.
One night, the room rented by Ramana and his wife was broken into. They were both sleeping. Ramana remembers a struggle, a fight and the last words of his wife: “ I will always love you”. When he wakes up, the motionless bloodied, body of his wife welcomes him. And he cries a loud cry that fills the sky, which no one hears.
And you, arrogant fool, think you know what love is?
Santim has read and seen many wars fought on the waves of emotions. Homes destroyed, children mutilated and women humiliated. Fellow humans descending to levels lower than animals by following their hearts alone. Senseless, irrational cruelties evoked by drumming up emotions.The mind swallowed by the passion of the heart. Follow your heart is good advice. Follow your heart is dangerous advice.The mindless heart.
Oh you ignorant man, think you know what the heart is and preach you that alone!
The mind and the heart. The heart and the mind.Which? Why? Santim knows many pretend they have the answers. Santim knows many believe they have the answers. They mistake their journey for the ultimate Truth. Like the wanderer who thinks he has arrived by just walking. So they preach what they are learning, not what they have known[4].
In preaching, they forget to listen but to their own voice, their own dreams, their own mind, their own hearts. Slowly becoming self-centric, they preach and they talk, talk, and talk. Forgetting to listen, they stop learning. Death of learning gives birth to fantasy.
Mouth. You have one mouth and it wants to talk, talk and talk. Alas you forget, the Supreme gave you two ears and a heart to listen! And a mind to think…..
To remind himself, Santim looks into his mind and heart and recalls a poem that he had once written.
If you ask the question: “who does not like sex?” you will expect to hear the answer, “who doesn’t!” Such an answer is to be expected because we are used to thinking and therefore expressing ourselves in general terms. We often do not think of the exceptions or alternative situations. Generally too, no one will deny that sex is a pleasurable activity. Again, there are exceptions to this subject to various conditions. We have been conditioned to ignore details.
One thing is clear: without the activity of sex, there will be no mode of procreation as we know it. Another thing is that without the pleasure attached to the sexual activity, many may just procrastinate the act of procreation! The energy and effort required may make some lazy to engage in procreation.
Generally too, most will support the notion of “love”.
Some people use sex to get love. Prostitution is often considered as an act of getting pecuniary favours by giving sexual favours. Prostitution, though it has been described as the oldest ‘profession’ in human history, is frowned upon by society as immoral. In prostitution, both the prostitute and the customer have a contract. It is simply sex for money and no other attachments or commitments are involved. Both parties are clear as to the activity concerned.
Likewise, in a situation where there is ‘consensual sex’, the position is also clear. Assuming both parties are emotionally stable and rational, one would not expect any complications.
But what about so called normal, ordinary situations where a woman, for example, manipulates a guy into having sex with her and then uses it as an emotional bait to trap him into a serious relationship? We have often heard remarks such as “How can you have sex with me if you do not love me?” (Forgetting that the guy can also ask: “did I force or mislead you?”) “You have not called me since we had sex” (forgetting that even earlier, the guy hardly calls), “You have used me” (forgetting that if the guy really had wanted sex, he could have sought for a less complicated alternative). How would you describe such women? Blackmailers? Immoral? Worse than prostitutes since unlike the prostitutes who want just money, such women wants the man’s life?!
Is it love or cruelty to get someone into a relationship using sex?
Others use love to get sex. I suppose men usually fall in this category though I am certain some women do too. Here you have the guy who uses ‘Bollywood’ language before and ‘Western” language after the event! Song and dances before and “that was just sex” language after. Such guys see women as nothing more than sexual objects or tools for their sexual gratification. If society frowns upon a rapist who forces himself upon the women, how do we treat men who manipulate emotions in a women? At the least when the rapist approaches you, you know that he is going to hurt you. What about guys who earn your trust and then betray you merely for skin? Is not betray of trust worse?
Ordinarily we are very quick to judge the rapist (and rightly so), but very slow to judge the guys who go around treating women as receptacles for their lust. In some societies, such men are even applauded as a “Casanova”. It is unfathomable that a cruel act of cheating someone can be applauded! A thief steals property. A casanova robs a person of faith in other human beings. Is this not cruel?
At some stage in our lives, there may be confusion between love and sex. Lust is mistaken for love. It is important to distinguish between the two and you need to have the integrity, honesty and courage to do the necessary.
We would agree that a relationship can only be stable if there is ‘two way love’. In a stable relationship, love and sex become indistinguishable. You cannot force someone to feel for you in a way that the person does not. This is like forcing the other to be untrue to you or be a hypocrite. If you insist, then you are being narcissistic and you do not really love him/her.
Fatal attractions are the worst nightmare for anyone.
Contrary to popular belief, power and glory are not ‘difficult’ to achieve though it is thought to be achieved by only a select few in society. In a sense, everyone who is born gradually attains power of sorts as he grows until he reaches a pinnacle of power whereupon; his power declines and then ends with death. A simple example will be the comparison between a baby and a teenager. The teenager yields much power compared to a baby.
This natural aspect of power has often been forgotten by many because of the distraction of “artificial” power”. By artificial power, I mean that power which is enhanced by the use of illusions and deceptive methods. Example, teenager A of equal natural capacity with teenager B is of equal power naturally. However, when the image of teenager B is artificially propped up by various means, teenager B creates the illusion that he is more powerful than teenager A. Examples of artificially propping tools are like certain clothing, a fictitious storyline, etc.
Likewise, Mr A of equal natural capacity with Mr B is of equal power naturally. But the moment, you use tools of illusion and deception such as presenting Mr B as His Excellency Mr B or Datok B or Dr B, you immediately give Mr B an illusion that he wields greater power than Mr A. In reality, they have the same natural power but the illusion of power favours Mr B. You can in reality ignore either and hence render them both powerless.
Power is present only when it is acknowledged and recognized. Power is effective only if you are subservient to it. Other wise, it remains illusory because other than the natural power, it is an illusion.
The myths concerning the "power" of artificial power exists because of several factors. Firstly, the confusion between natural power and artificial power. Natural power is naturally available to everyone and it is evolutionary without any effort to achieve it. It only needs to be recognized and used accordingly. Example, from not being able to run, you can run. From not being able to reason (as a baby), you are now able to reason (as an adult).
Secondly, power has been equated with wealth and political power. The person with greater wealth is deemed to be more powerful than one who has less. The one with political power is deemed to be more powerful than one who has not. Though naturally, all have equal power, but in terms of illusion, they appear to have differing levels of power. Example: a Master and a peasant. The Master wants obedience from the peasant. The peasant refuses to obey. All sorts of punishment is meted out against the peasant and he still refuses to obey. The Master’s power to get obedience is ineffective because in reality it is an illusion of power. At the extreme case, the Master orders the peasant to be executed for disobedience.
The Master may have the peasant’s corpse but never his obedience. The very fact of this execution order by the Master is his admission that his “power” had failed to get obedience from the peasant. Being an illusion of power, it is only effective if the peasant submits to it. Natural power cannot fail. The Master failed because the peasant succeeded in using his natural power against the illusion of power held by the Master.
Artificial power exists only if it is recognized and acknowledged. For example, if all the peasants had refused to recognize the Master, could all the peasants be executed? Then, he would be the Master of whom? The moment you refuse to recognize the Master, his power over you ceases. Your natural power comes to the fore and against his artificial power, you will certainly win.
Thirdly, many do not understand the distinction between memory and heart in the context of natural and artificial power. Ghandi had faith in his natural power and used it for the good of humankind. In his fight against injustice in Africa he called upon non-violence or satyagraha. For those who do not understand natural power, it may seem a contradiction in terms when you call upon people to fight with the ‘weapon’ of non-violence. Artificial power hurts the body. Natural power overcomes the heart.
Many world leaders and personalities have come and gone where some are remembered in the heart while some are remembered in the mind. Those who are remembered with the heart had allowed their natural power to communicate with others. Those who are remembered with the mind had used their artificial power. What is in the mind is subject to memory loss and thus require reminders. What is in etched in the heart requires no reminder for it is felt.
Once a leader with immense artificial power dies, he is remembered only in history or on artificial occasions unless he had touched the people with his natural power. This is because artificial power being illusory dies with the owner. Close your eyes and think Mao, Jesus, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Hitler, Ghandi, Stalin, Mother Teresa, etc. You will find interchanging stimuli between your mind and the heart. Therein lies the difference between artificial power and natural power. Natural power being real, lives long after the death of the owner.
Have you observed that the child has no wealth or political power but she is able through her natural powers make the parents do her bidding? The natural power possessed by a child is so strong that it controls many areas of our life. The advertisers and image builders recognize this power and attempt to convert it into artificial power for their clients.
Fourthly, God calls upon us through our natural power while evil whispers to us through artificial power. Natural power may appear slow to achieve results but it lasts. Artificial power seems fast to achieve its ends but it terminates. Human beings being inclined towards impatience and hastiness, tend towards artificial power in the name of expediency, pragmatism and such. Artificial power being illusory, in the ultimate analysis, the respective human beings gets deceived.
The divine call to utilise natural power is non compulsive. You have a choice. There is no force, no violence, it is soft but firm. There is love, compassion. Natural power needs only itself without any external aid for its effectiveness and existence.
The evil call to utilize artificial power is compulsive in nature and threatening. There are attempts to take away your choice, most times even violently. Artificial power needs coercion, deception, violence and force for its existence and apparent effectiveness.
The great scriptures in the world often describe this life as nothing but play and amusement. Partly this is so because of the confusion in the human mind that artificial power is real and hence they become slaves when they are actually born free. Due to this confusion and the reinforcement of this confusion systematically by an illusory complex system, what is unnatural gradually becomes accepted as real.
Hence most human beings end up being deceived to live as slaves to the artificial powers of other mortals. Since they have chosen to live as slaves, albeit sometimes well fed and well taken care of, they go through this life never having lived their own life.
We are so used to ourselves – in so many ways. Our face, our smell, our mannerisms, our this and our that. Everyday we look at ourselves in the mirror and get so used to it. We might even forget that we are beautiful or ugly in the eyes of others. In our eyes, we are we.
Being mortals, we go though a process – of being weak, to being strong and then returning to the state of weakness we began from. Some describe this as the journey from “cradle to grave”.
As a child, we are curious, full of energy, full of hope and full of faith. We only see ourselves growing from strength to strength. With no knowledge to increasing knowledge. Slowly, slowly we get into the world. From our “safe world” we now have to come face to face with the world of others – our first challenge of acceptance, understanding and self adjustment. Some manage fast, some take a lifetime. Each their own journeys.
Then, we reach the age of teen. The age of attention, The boys and girls - each with their own sense of what is important. Their own attractiveness – the hair style, the macho body, the show of skin and flesh, the lingo, the clothes, etc, etc – each out to express each one’s sense of uniqueness. Each trying very hard to be a different. Mostly at the superficial level because many, many just takes years before wisdom visits them.
Many die before attainting wisdom.
Then the age of apparent control. The world invites you into the system. Makes you part of the system. If before you were the recipient, you now are made to think you are the shaper and decider of events. You become anointed as an “adult”, whatever that word really means. Power. And with power breeds arrogance, loss of thankfulness, greed and most importantly , self delusion.
Then, the age of stabilizing as if there is such a thing as a “stable life”. But of course, mortals have an easy but misleading criteria of stabilizing – material successes and the applause of the ignorant majority. The car that you drive, the house that you live in, the clothes that adorn your body, the circle of friends whom you are seen with and such. And yet, many a “stabilized individuals” experience intense unhappiness when alone and by themselves deep, deep within their hearts. While the audience and their “friends” are applauding their “success, they feel a void in their life.
Have I been cheated by life?, they ask. Where did my life go- and when?
Then you enter the old age, period of sickness and real loneliness. Where has all the attractiveness, the energy, vitality, need for other people’s approvals all gone? If once upon a time, it was very important that you can run a 100 metres in 10 seconds, all you want now is to be able to get off your bed without help from someone else. Definition of success relatively changes.
If, once upon a time, it was so important that you looked pretty or sexy or macho, now all you wish for is for your body not to get more unhealthy. While all your life, you had focused on the FORM, life now has brought your focus back to the SUBSTANCE…but a trifle too late!
If once you were busy fighting against others for all sorts of dubious causes, now you can hardly move your finger to feed yourself. If you had stood tall and arrogant, now you could hardly …………..
If once upon a time, it was important how people see you and you take all efforts to spruce up your persona, now you can hardly see anything due to falling sight.
Try, just try to enjoy life. After all, if you can read this, that means you are “comfortable in life” and hence no amount of urging you to introspect is going to succeed! Only life can be the best teacher. And that includes to me.
There was a puddle of water on the ground. I was moved to peek into it and suddenly I found myself pulled deep into it. I was falling weightlessly and perceived Hime floating along whispering the following thoughts into my mind:
“You can have all the discussions that you want. After all, while there is a mouth, there is always the inclination to want to talk. If you observe carefully at people in public places, they are always talking. The lips never seem to stop. It keeps moving and keeps making sounds. It leaves you wondering that people have so much to say about so many things.
One often overlooks that compared to one mouth; nature had decided to give human beings two ears. But how many do actually listen. They may hear what you say, but do they listen? Do you listen to what you hear?
To listen is to understand what is being said. To hear is to hear the sounds, the words - not the meaning.
Listening is one of the major activities of human beings that have been grossly overlooked. You mortals have never made the time and effort to cultivate this skill. Hence, you have many problems.
People listen to what they like to hear. It does not matter if it is simply a myth or an untruth or a deep seated prejudice born of ignorance.
They simply hear what they do not want to listen; even if it is the truth that can save them.
If you insist only on hearing and never listening, how then can you ever “progress to higher levels”? How then can you ever, ever live as one? Refusing to listen, mortals can never live as one in true harmony on this transient planet called earth.
For expediency sake, you live a life of mutual tolerance until you reach the brink of it. Without acceptance born of understanding and knowledge, there can never be lasting, genuine relationships. You simply move on from one relationship crisis to another, with short spans of occasional truce.
What is the point of discussions when each partakes with preconceived ideas cast in stone? While the other is expounding his views, you hear what he says but in fact you are listening to what is in your mind that you want to say when the other has finished.
You do not allow at all for what is in your mind to be tested, to be challenged or to be verified by facts and alternative perceptions. Hence, your ignorance and your standards remain with you and your clan. Completely incestuous level of thinking.
Your refusal to listen enables your views to be fortified over time until it becomes not only the truth but the absolute truth to you. Over centuries of faithful repetition and rote learning by your descendants, even the lie becomes the ultimate truth.
Any other alternative viewpoints hurts you and you are willing to hurt back harder. Centuries of repetition has made even the lie your true culture and value. An invitation to reevaluation is seen as an affront on your “sacred’ way of life and culture.
Each clan with its insistence of its own ways, buttressed by the support of its very own experts in its midst. Clan struggle and futile aggressive proselytisation of the others to your ways without inviting thinking has become a norm among you.
Hence, you should never be surprised that mortals will orphan another, make another a widow, kill a son or a mother, or father or the beloved one of another simply in the name of maintaining one’s own ways.
Your refusal to listen to each other solidifies the bridge that is between you. The bridge will forever be there, without which your relationships will cease to exist. With the bridge, the relationship will never grow into one unity, especially if the bridge is merely a convenient tool.
Humans have become such fools they keep repeating the phrase “to bridge relationships” when a bridge is nothing more than an intermediary between two terrain and two things. As long as the intermediary is there, the two can never be one. AT each end of the bridge, each crawls back into its accepted cocoons. Shouldn’t you be forging relationships instead? Shouldn’t you be accepting each other as unique creations without the need to be uniform like a factory product?
Of course you can never allow your diverse nature’s to come alive as each of you do not listen to what nature has been telling you for ages. ‘Since each of you wants the other to be like you, the strongest tribe among you will succeed in dominating the others’. Domination invariably equals oppression. Anything oppressed, over time naturally springs back. The natural law of the coil.
Any and every type of domination is bound to create strife, discord and tension within the community of humankind. Call it culture, call it religion, call it laws, call it norms or call it by any fancy name or jargon but domination is never the same as structured living. Hypocrisy for a while, and rebellion or revolution at the end. Your refusal to listen to each other creates miseries for you all.
If not listening is already dangerous, consider the indoctrinating techniques that are systematically used to make you not listen to each other. My dear mortals, ironical though it may seem, humans are being trained and indoctrinated in the art of NOT listening to each other for centuries. Mortals are not aware of this because it has become common place like breathing. That is how successful the techniques are.
The techniques are given various labels – religion, race, class, family honour, country, love, culture, belief, language, etc, etc. Labels meant for convenience of understanding have become monstrous tools of division and hate and misery.
Even a snake occasionally sheds its old skin. But each of you not only want to continue wearing the old skin but want others to follow suit. Other wise, you deem others as negatively different and that is bad. Human beings – even in death they insist on differences. Alas for this species and its preservers!”
I struggled and finally pulled myself out of the puddle, scarcely drowning. Puffing for breath, I realized Hime was gone and I was left accompanied by myself again.
