Sunday 30 September 2007

MR. MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI, WHO?

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an ordinary man with extraordinary acumen and charisma thrust upon him by the people to his great discomfort, who dreamt of an utopian world full of promises that was destined not to happen, at least till he comes back again and get into it. He fondly called it the Rama Rajya (the kingdom of Lord Rama) but could never comprehend it fully to even his own amazement and enjoyed it too. Like Jesus the Christ and Goutama the Buddha, he very clearly knew that by its very nature, the worlds of ours are imperfect and further that its inherent contradictions are its only strengths and realities, including those dreams.
Gandhi liked to habitually experiment with something that he called truth. It somehow made him quite different sort of a person in a time characterized by falsity, even after realizing that the truths that he was in search of would be the only casualties amidst the simmering din of raging falsehood and fallacy. True to his nature, he never compromised and his compulsive adherence to truth instantly made him a celebrity or a champion of a difficult cause that can not be achieved by us; though it bordered on the plains of the relative truths.
Gandhi was born like anyone of us in a nondescript place and time as usual but he was reborn sooner out of a tumultuous time into which he was sucked in for no faults of his. As a result he preferred to turn non-violent knowing well that that was the best course of action to preserve the dignity at the expense of a cheap life that he was wearing at that point of time and had no courage or the required money to buy a weapon.
It was the best way to be the winner, he was forced to reason out to best of his advantage against his tormentors and cunning sharks. By doing this, he certainly won few of the thrust upon skirmishes and some wars by violating the rulebooks or throwing out the necessary norms bare handed and bare footed but lost finally when he was assassinated and died abruptly becoming an unwilling character, very much comical, of the violence he wanted to eradicate in his simplistic ways. The saddest part of the drama was that the violence was perpetuated on him curiously in response to his non-violence that mocked its very efficacy. He devised his own rule of engaging his detractors and enemies by confusing them. But than they say, there are no rules in love and war!
Very strangely, Gandhi was never a politician or a revolutionary in the conventional sense yet he surpassed all of them without being aware of it. At best he was a hurt ordinary folk of the countryside, who was so simple that he thought by asking for the birth rights of his fellow countrymen, he would be able to convince the people in power and having brute naked force to secure it for a song. And surprisingly, he sure did it by shocking and shaking the mighty, manipulative and unscrupulous forces who justifiably felt humiliated by his rustic methods and fakir attires. He got what he wanted but lost all for he reposed enough unnecessary faith in the people who were in disguise and crowding around him day out day in proclaiming themselves as his best buddies yet waiting to manipulate and gobble him up to disprove him, malign him in order to reinforce a politics as a as a normal process of acquiring ill-gotten power and wealth. Though Gandhi knew of the machination of selfish gain he tolerated to change hearts but failed miserably when finally the black forces annihilated him and mauled him in broad daylights.
As a person, Gandhi suffered much like anyone of us be he never kept it to himself or inside his private shell but laid bare all his shortcomings, vices, virtues, agonies, strengths, weaknesses and even his fragile lean body and nearly starved soul so that others can minutely examine it and draw lessons for themselves. He thought that it will largely free him from the bondages and place him with the ordinary man who would be also suffering like him. He made the mistake of considering the ordinary man for real never knowing that in actuality in does not exit. Since he was unlike anyone amongst us,he quickly caught our imagination. People flocked to him to examine a curious person who was very different and ultimately discovered him to be nothing much of substance. Yet, these people fancied him as a subject matter of caricature while at the same time trying to copy him in parts and bits to their own advantage. It was sort of cannibalizing him with his permission. On the part of the people, they enjoyed being ecstatic and derived the feel good factors finding Gandhi to be the storehouse of such goodies.
For many of us, it is not possible and easy to believe that a man could be like him and that he existed in flesh and blood for we are used to the monstrous characters whom we find everywhere, including in the us.
But Gandhi certainly did exist and that he in a limited sense was a symbol of the unusual as per the meanings of our own dictionaries. The only fault with the man was that he did not dabble in religion by claiming to be the chosen prophet of an unverifiable mute god or brokered power for the sake of nourishing his stunted egos. He only wanted to be a common man and here, he could only approximate them as an esoteric being.
Gandhi talked of an economy of the people of spinning wheel and cottage industries that would be fit for sustaining the republics, by saturating and satiating the wants; simultaneously nurturing mother earth. He conceived man and all other beings as the extension of nature and not different from it. Even if it had tremendous potential to succeed, it never too firm roots as a process of a new political economy though people everywhere would have liked to be the ‘good of such an arrangement of a pristine societal economy based on love, faith, cooperation, understanding, want saturation, spontaneous exchanges of gods and services and a new social order bereft of any nasty competition and happy citizens universal in their outlook and action. Though, such a society of Gandhi’s imagination sufficiently impressed us, it failed to materialize because we preferred to remain as greedy as before and only partially wanted to his promised economic heaven by faking our intentions. Naturally Gandhi was puzzled to the core and his economies crumbled for good, even during his lifetime.
I simply love the man called Gandhi for all his follies and failures and of course for all his pure thoughts. If you try to know him unconditionally, you would too start loving and liking him though you and I may not start strictly following him or be his disciple.
Gandhi is a figure and personality that can not be compared how much hard we may try or whatever methods we follow to evaluate; not even the so called common man could be deployed as a yardstick to measure him—except perhaps with Gandhi. And mind you this is the best part of him. Gandhi is a man who can not be dismissed or ignored once he is known. So decide to either know him or all together not to know him but nothing in between. He is also the only person one can be critical of without being able to demolish him for his resilience and relevance of a different order. We was also a man of loosely knitted integrities neatly foraged by him with much labor and care from various sources that incidentally includes his enemies-whom he called his best friends.
Gandhi tried very hard to be something resembling a saint flaunting a couple of misfiring tricks bordering religion and divinity that invariably went against him because he had more of the non-saintly qualities than the so called saints themselves. The communalists mistook him for a rabid communalist and the secularists took him for granted as a staunch diehard secularist. He was neither of it but above it. May be he was a humanist or something like that to deduce about his convictions. Many believe that he actually understood nothing of it. But that is perfectly fine with Gandhi. This is so because he was nothing more and never ever a grown up child who was mistaken as a matured patriarch for his bizarre theatrics and truancies habituated to the attention of others.
Gandhi enthralled and entertained all and sundry enacting his heavily borrowed folk antics at the same time speaking the dialects of cross sections of people with an innocent looking agenda in tow having the potency stirring the hornet’s nest. He knew how to spread wildfire for a worthy cause with much funfair.
He spoke of queer things as well to look more of a original thinker or generous but was non of it. He vigorously propagated the urgency of marital celibacy, vegetarianism, unity of religions and oneness of mankind and respect for the animals and inanimate things, etc., etc. and became a victim of it and found hardly any inspired takers. But never mind, that was the staple of the man who struggled to derive extra mileages for his other causes by saying and expecting of non-attainable ideals. Years after him, it is still true in a topsy turvy world of ours that is marred by contradictions is too narrow and selfish; where Gandhi was but destined to fail, even not being a failure.
Gandhi thought sincerely so much for others that he proved himself a miserable dud. He betrayed his tribe of cunning businessmen and traders of India by not booking enough wealth and profit from whatever he did for a living, neglected his wife and children starving them of their rights in abnegating his duties towards them and became the cause of upheaval, eruption, destruction and death while achieving his dreams. But sincerely ask anybody who suffered for Gandhi and you would instantly come to know that they simply like, enjoyed and loved it accepting it to be a rare a much sought after unique gift from their own Gandhi.
He additionally, stood for the cows, the holy varieties, for not to be cowed down by the bulls—the powers that were out in the open and having a free run—by firmly taking on the repressive trigger-happy imperialists and traders or the rabid racists by their horns chanting Ram dhoons (devotional songs for Ram, his ideal and hero) and a magical mantra—do or die. Gandhi cracked, whipped, kicked, pricked and shrinked the enemies of humanity and freedom and also made them lick their own wounds with—love. Only a Gandhi could ever do that.
Gandhi was partially undone with the partition of his home, India, that he considered to be his twin self and the ugly communal carnage and pogrom that followed soon thereafter. This event turn him into an apologetic, a pathetic one and a lonesome man with recurring nightmares. It failed Gandhi for he never learned the rudimentary lessons of history. A dejected Gandhi than found no way out but to align with the sordid fate to again continue his experiment with truth. And most probably he feared to face the people and wept a lot in self-confinement and gnawing solitude and despair. It was the time he also regretted for being Gandhi.
Gandhi, the man who hobnobbed with impunity with contemporary bigwigs of the world and the faceless and nameless people of the villages equally certainly had a very good sense of humor as well. Once he confessed to the people of an entire nation that being a veggie by tradition he had had not the chance to munch a piece of cooked mutton, yet very much craved for it for long. Once without the knowledge and permission of his family members, he stealthily ate a bowl full of steaming hot spicy meat curry with his meat eating friends. These co-conspirators and accomplices had earlier certified to Gandhi that meat really tastes well and would make him muscular, strong and brave and further that his satisfaction was guaranteed. However, that night Gandhi was jolted off from his slumber to greet an unfamiliar animal. In his black and white dream, he saw the ram or may be a goat weeping non-stop while calling him by his name to please spare him from the sharp knife of the ugly looking butcher standing nearby in solemnity to execute the mundane work. This vivid dream sufficiently rattled Gandhi so much so that he next morning confessed about his sin and misadventure of eating meat, to his family members begging for forgiveness. Throughout his life, Gandhi decidedly was out on the streets to aggressively promote the virtues of vegetarianism and tried hard to prove that a veggie could be equally strong. Courageous and healthy like his meat eating counterparts by becoming a Gandhi for demonstration. But a word of caution—never fall for the guy without examining and experimenting with the truth of the matter that vegetarianism is best, as per Gandhi’s own yardstick. He could be just kidding, you know.
I am certainly not out to vilify a man called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, admittedly for being incapable of it. If Gandhi were alive today, he would have listened to me in rapt attention in person forgetting the mighty British and their rule with undulated simplicity of an innocent child with infectious smiles to understand the truths behind my views about him and perhaps would have extended an invitation to me to be the inmate of his serene yet busy ashram and cleaned my toilet to convert me as his fan forever. Believe me, he meted out this treatment to many and in the process swelled the rank and file of his unique proverbial troop that was famous as the Banara Sena or the Warrior Monkey Regiment of Gandhi. You may not be knowing that it was the very Banara Sena that drove out the repressive forces from the soil of India without firing even a single shot, captained and commanded by a half naked Gandhi.
Gandhi is best remembered not as the person who secured independence for the people of India and fought tooth and nail against all forms of injustice and discrimination or who stood for the dignity of man everywhere but certainly for his love for Rama and the Three Monkeys. While Rama taught him to be truthful, fearless and just; the Three Monkeys taught him the most cardinal principles of life and living—Speak not evil, hear not evil and see not evil—a fable that has much relevance but very limited utility in our world of today and of the future.
In sum Gandhi was a confirmed dreamer and doer.

Friday 28 September 2007

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BITE A DOG?

Panic not for I want to assure you that you certainly read it right and the innocent looking printer’s devil has not played cupid or wrought havoc or even for that matter the ubiquitous stealthy net spider or tramp bot has not cannibalized or played the tricks on such an authentic yet so called bizarre header. Further, let me also clarify that I am completely hale and hearty and of late have not taken the stinking dog biscuits probably laced with cannabis or gone crazy after a tiff with my quarrelsome bitchy wife; though some of you might conveniently would like to deduce that you have an inherent right to disagree with me. However, you may do so at your own risk and responsibility. I want to say they do fancy democracy just like the dogs of the farm.
Like you, I am not in doubt about the authenticity of the cliché that proclaims, ‘Dogs are the salt of the earth (including the cosmos) and are the best friends of man” (of course woman also). The canine instinct in them and us definitely contributed much towards the making and unmaking of our civilizations and dens, I do agree, but want to stress that without the doggies (I mean of all possible descriptions and sizes), we would have gone friendless and bereft of the dear enemies- a frightful situation of sort.
Have you noticed that after god, dog is the nearest relative of man; hanging precariously in between the two parts of its evolution and devolution; combining the plus minus qualities of both. It is like admitting that man is created in the image of god and dog is created in the image of man. With a pinch of salt, take it as the transformation or metamorphosis of three alter egos and a foolproof connectedness that simply defies any rational or irrational explanations of the trinity.
I am not sure who invented the yummy hotdogs bit the guy was a sheer genius, better than the geeky coder tribes of today, I am cent percent sure. For ages and ages, those lesser mortals amongst us, who never had or have the required guts to apply their teeth (which incidentally includes the dogtooth) to an extra smart or rascal actual dog, have taken to the symbolic and ritualistic tasty n easy way our recourse to vent their exasperations without much hullabaloo or risk.
Who is not impressed with the sacrosanct spasmodic internecine duels and determining waterloos fought in the lanes and by-lanes routinely and erupting suddenly in the villages, towns, cities, metropolises and megalopolises? It is a painful time filled with anxieties in the neighborhoods that are jolted off to shudder in awe for such shrill filled bolts from the blues, literarily. These unfortunate funny yet horrible dogfights are anything in between friendly matches to an eye for an eye types via bouts of joyous rants, enacted to enthrall the aloof bipeds masters and also a regular bid to proclaim the territorial rights over the neatly demarcated dog republics segregated with the liberal sprinkle of unpalatable urine but invisible to the naked eyes of ours.
As the rain lashes or the winter envelopes the earth, the recalcitrant neo-sentimental sugar-daddies turn passionate lovers and become raptorial to forcibly win the hearts of the bitches, largely unmindful of the dangers of the nasty gang wars, bleeding wounds and instant deprivation, about to unfold soon. These are the times they throw both hot and cold waters on the humanly framed rules of incest to quickly interlock the private parts in full public glare to sire the puppies of the future by the din of the unsuccessful suitors’ howl, bark and whine. We, the moralist passerby pretend to be ignorant of the amorous commotions of the congregating dogs, secretly admiring the dog-tired east and west ward bound lovers, simultaneously pitying the underdogs.
The dogs of the universe, since time immemorial have been bogged down with the philosophical question as to “Who after all owns the bones.?” Till now, though nobody knows it, the riddle persists to add more questions to the central problem. From dusk to dawn and beyond these truth seeking dogs remain busy in search of the bones. These bones that come in various genre are the real bone of contentions that have dogged the dogs and us alike for eons, where a thrown in piece of rotten meat comes to us as a bonus. It is always like, who owns the bone or meat in question that also decides the categorizations of the haves or have-nuts and pure have-nots. While the lefty swear by it publicly and act contrary to it in private. The righty swear by it in privately and act contrary to it in public; sadly before the very dogs who in the first place actually fuelled their political imaginations to bamboozle, plunder and corner power.
As you know, every dog has its day to celebrate. Whether in defeat or win, a day invariably comes in the life and time of a dog that helps it to taste the victory and score brilliantly—though it might be just assort of poetic justice or a heavenly gift shrouded in mystery to prove time and again that a real dog never loses. However, it is not essential to measure and evaluate in the un-relative time frame of man but the doge-years. There is no valid reason to be rabid about the veracity of its truth, for you must have often heard of the occasional and abrupt yuppies of the lolloping sane and loomy dogs, who suddenly go razzmatazz or become gung-ho in ecstasy.
If you keep a tamed ferocious dog, be rest assured that it would tick and lick you so much that it would appear as if out of vogue. But verily, this arrangement would scare the roughs even if you actually is nothing but a scarecrow for real.
Additionally, if you somehow believe that you are not a historical figure or a history-sheeter a paparazzi chasing subject of the gutter or even think that what is the point in living the life of an ordinary dog or an inhabitant frog of a filthy pond or spruce up your sagging image in the fog or want to quickly climb to the top or even plan to catapult to fame by an instant hop or think that it is about time to simply bump, etc., etc. than it is best, as soon as possible, to bite an actual dog. You must do it carefully or else you might land up in a soup.
Take your time and consider carefully the age-old adage and proverb that says, “ If you have not bitten a dog (especially the rabid ones) than you are not a man for sure.” As far as I am concerned, I very much like the dogs but also bitten few of them for duty, pleasure and also to settle scores.

Saturday 22 September 2007

BE SURE 2 INSURE

Do you know that while the married drivers are in the good book of the insurers, the bachelors drivers are considered a excruciating pain in the neck and therefore the insurers charge them more than the married varieties with the premise that sooner or later, by providing them cover they themselves might blow up the lid of their own cover. While hunting for a temporary nest, it is not different either with the testosterone laced eligible bachelors who are asked the odd question of their marital status and than denied the privilege of hiring a room. They are driven out at times with the proposal of exorbitant rent and pathetic terms. Like the sagacious insurers, the suspicious looking house owners and proud fathers of their plum daughters think that these snooty fellows always secretly carry a mug full of black paints and should therefore need no sympathy or a place to hide under the sun including their house.
If at all you are a miser and a teen, yet want to lower your insurance load to be more comfortable with your already dry life, it is better for you to skid your troubled years and start ageing faster. You too need to occupy a cave in an eerie village near to the highway, for they say that rural areas have lower accident rates than the densely populated cities since the likelihood of an accident is much greater that experiences greater traffic and trafficking. They also believe that the inexperienced teens would most probably cause more accidents by sheer design and predispositions that may ruin them of their bright futures. The insurers feel that these reckless teens are all out to push them into a tizzy and the hell of bankruptcy by sooner or later evaporating their nearly filled coffers.
Than, if you are about to buy a limousine sort of beauty, you may better heed the insurers fast lane prescriptions to quickly abandon the plan and settle down for an extra cheap lousy beast of your choice that is preferably much weather beaten and is a gem of the secondhand goods market. The insurers loves you much and likes your vehicle only when both of you are in poor conditions. Oh yes, for that they reward you by patting on your back and charging less and less, thinking that the liabilities of yours is really dwindling.
But just look at that-- since certain vehicles are the darlings of the thieves, the extra cautious insurers warn you in the best interests of yours and of course theirs by sermonizing that it is best not to own a magnetic vehicle that attracts the creepy thieves like the ointment calling the flies. If you are still adamant of and want to drive it, than do so at your own expenses and risks by coughing up extra hefty sums as the premium to the insurers. But then also remain prepared to be at the receiving end of the never ending road and get ready to be taken for a ride by the sneaky guys and gals on the prowl.

Tuesday 18 September 2007

THE STORY OF MY TV SET

Some 20 years ago, when I first heard about the search engine, I was a greenhorn and computer was Greek to me. Then, today’s humble television was virtually ruling the roost in my country India making the dwarf looking radio sets things of antiquity. I must reveal to you that some years prior to the golden period, I along with my best friend rode a dilapidated bi-cycle and pedaled hard to reach a particular spot of my city to have a rare and exclusive glance of the queer looking TV antenna carefully mounted atop a freshly whitewashed double storied building. Though, like the other inquisitive onlookers, we could not discover the TV in question in black and white, nevertheless it was a rare experience for us—or we thought so, somehow not being fully convinced. I took a vow, then and there, that I would open a bank account in a nationalized bank to save enough money to turn my dream in to reality, of owning a real TV someday soon. I did not tell this to my friend for reasons not known to me as yet. I did so living a life of fine balancing by nearly starving myself and other family members including my girl friend of that time for a long torturous period of about five years. It certainly bore fruits and finally I brought a small box like b&w TV set with much enthusiasm. I took my time in private to settle score with the proud wretched fellow who had the courage to hide the TV and was crooked enough to show the antenna only—that too on a hot day.
With the new TV set, came a newfound status, though it was short-lived. The much jealous and extra cunning neighbors and sundry city dwellers were smart enough in quickly acquiring bigger and bigger and still bigger TV sets with color screens, remote control gadgets and god knows whatnot to mock at me. Failing to compete with them, I resigned to a fate of despondency. Intermittently, I tried find solace by tuning my ageing radio sets. Than suddenly my problem got compounded as my TV set started to play varied tricks on me. On quarterly basis as a routine, it made me to run to the half educated ugly looking stunted technician hiding in a small shop in the downtown area, who most probably sided with my ailing TV set and not me. Both of them almost drenched me of my scarce energy, punctured my ego, social status and converted me into a skeptic with pockets full of holes. Time definitely went by and I grew matured. I continued with my first (and last) TV set as an item of decoration at my house, by deciding not to join the mad mad rat race of acquiring the extra inches or true flatness in the newly paraded TV sets like others. For I knew I was different and not in the crowd.
For the last several tears, I have been accosting prospective customers of secondhand goods, including the TVs belonging to diverse socio-economic-ethnic-religious backgrounds and strata, but to no avail. My newly added woe is that these cheap goods customers are somehow trying to make me believe that due to excess production in Korea and Ivory Cost, etc. the TV market is in a glut and that for that reason and many other novel or innovative causes, my old TV set’s cost roughly equals to or goes below the rate of any non-descriptive scraps.
So far so good. May be the world has changed much and much water has flown down the holy Ganges or may be these people are out to bamboozle and con me by belittling the value of my TV set so that they can auction it at the Sotheby’s and chance upon a windfall for a song. Though not sure, I have decided to lay in wait with my old flickering TV set for good and meanwhile to take to the computer.

Monday 17 September 2007

A REQUIEM FOR THE PAST

The past is a lousy thing of the past that is an ass and nothing else, best forgotten, kicked or recalled as lesions for the making of the present or the future. Beyond this it has no other practical utility. However, knowing fully well, we somehow tend to cling and swear by it. Such an excessive preoccupation of the bygone events and eventualities of yesteryears, render us drained and literally immobilized. By indulging in rumination and reminiscences, we in fact tend to prod very hard to escape from the stark realities of life, living and today that is full of promises and possibilities. The recalls, than for us turn free leisure and luxuries that we weave, rearranging the elements as we like them to be. They help us to seek solace and win sympathies or pathetic pities, variously justifying our inactions.
Often, we become the willing victim of in letting our unconscious and sub-conscious mind to play tricks on us by allowing ourselves to be drawn to a time that is long dead and has lost all or much of its color and relevance in the present. Though, in itself or by itself, the past is incapable of resurrection; yet we recreate it deftly to walk into its numerable traps. Than, we fail to realize that these shadows-very dark, of aberrations would one day overpower us by blurring our vision. In turn, an overworked mind of ours churns habitually the destructive illusions, making us restless and rudderless.
The past has no other name—Just call it the oblivion. It is a moth eaten canvas of jumbled up and assembled canvas of absurd abstractions that cannot grow flesh, blood and emotions again, however hard we may try or want it to be. The joys and sorrows that once existed and we had experienced, were so, only in relation to those unique milieu along with the erstwhile actors, elements and the contexts. There is absolutely little chance of their coming together again together exactly the same way, in spite of our longing. What we do not know and fail to accept is that like the memories, they must have decayed, disintegrated or probable died of suffocations of the time. In actuality, they cannot ever enact themselves even if we meticulously script the probable plays, to sit and watch the acts right on the stage.
A past has no other utility except that it is to be forgotten and forgiven. We must allow the past of ours to die or facilitate its transition so that it can go missing as a fugitive, destined never to return. Someday, if we decide to visit the past in person to be at the scene, we would certainly find to our amazement and awe, the rubbles and broken artifacts, strewn here and there or buried deep along with few disjointed bones. A past is therefore numb and shapeless. Our reminiscences are just the dark alleys that lead to nowhere. To live a life in the present, it is best to escape its tyranny as fact as possible.
Know that villages after villages, cities after cities and civilizations after civilizations or the mighty egos and all powerful gods, one day would be decimated or change colors to turn pale for the coming todays. Have we not heard of the mighty emperors and their empires that vanished so that the inquisitive archaeologists and vandals would make a decent living by finding them?

Sunday 16 September 2007

PATHS TO SPIRITUALISM

Spiritualism is an innate state of being juxtaposed against becoming that transcends knowledge or reasoning which are basically partial or limiting. Essentially, a spiritual person is someone who is completely freed from the jaws of dogmas and bondages of any kind. The notion of sacred and profane, justifying logic and philosophies, prescriptions, ritual, hell and heaven, magical power and miracle, myths and sense of superiority or inferiority, etc. usually associated with religious systems assume no meaning and dissolve to make way for the birth of non-judgmental rationality. Though religion survives and thrives on the matrix of spiritualism, yet it is man-made and nothing but a body of principles to organize societal groups by acting as a dominant ideology. However, human societies cannot banish the organized religions for the obvious reason that it satisfies their earthly quests and douses their fears. Spiritualism, on the other hand satisfies a perennial quest of man as to who he is and not what he is that is independent of religion. While religion is preoccupied to propagate gods of various descriptions, spiritualism searches the presence of divinity—in everything and everywhere. It is an individual quest though at the same time it is ubiquitous and all pervasive. Religion is as essential as our food and sex and functional to the core yet, a polemic in its degraded form.
When one is completely in unison with the elements of nature, appreciates and appropriates things as they are with total freedom, ceases to attach meanings to the happenings around in a manner that crosses the threshold of any utilitarian evaluation and enjoys an existence as an essential part or extension of the externalities far removed from the confines of joy, pain or awe; he or she is certainly in the plains of spirituality. Only in a condition of least resistance to no resistance one can experience the fulsomeness of spiritualism, that is pristine and undiluted. It is a state of total submission to divinity and acceptance of dawn of the timeless time.
To walk on the valleys of spiritualism we have to invoke the love in us, beyond the mundane. It is harmonious, healing, reciprocal yet ever growing and evolving—that radiates in all directions. One needs to harness a love that is divine and uniting. A love that resolves all conflicts is what prepares us to bond and gain the spiritual insights. Through contemplation and self realization we can reach to such an abundance with ease.
Spiritualism, therefore is a personal experience. We can discover it by unshackling ourselves from the tiny makeshift worlds that somehow appear real to us. We do not have to deny them but to recognize their imperfections. This would liberate us and take towards a spiritual reality. But know that the imperfect thoughts, causation and resultant effects are distortions and we cannot fully escape it. It relates to living and not life. They are like the dark prisons designed to sustain us, nothing beyond. We have to escape it to taste the freedom. We have to chart our own routes of escape and reach the realm of total tranquility.
Spiritualism is basically knowing oneself and witnessing the umbilical unity of everything, known and unknown. It is an acceptance of divine beyond me and us. When we are liberated the third eye in us opens up and a truth is discovered. This a truth that is a priori. It is a state of growth and evolution sans the so called notions of death, destruction, decay and the likes.
We can put the quest to fruition by suspending the egos in us and by merging with the universal schemata—in becoming its consciousness.

Monday 10 September 2007

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET?

WYSIWYG is perhaps the greatest and most notorious of the follies and riddles known to mankind. Sages, philosophers, prophets and others have gone bust in trying to decipher and resolve the contentious issue. Humble folks like us are no exception though they the ones who often take to the WYSIWYG editor to get what they fervently punched on the rattling keyboard as consolations, in this bad mad world. Taken for a ride is what it boils down to and it seems we never ever learn the nasty lesions even for once.
Ruminate and ponder as to how often have you been duped in styles, while at the same time you kept on believing that what you wanted and what you saw were yours in black and while—that you saw keeping your eyes wide open throughout your life? And is it not that latter on you discovered to your amazement that they were just the contraband and half naked realities passed on to you as truths?
When it comes to getting and giving, equally these goodies of promises and expectations simply turn the apparent authenticity. WYSIWYG thrives in profiteering and profit booking or simply for the sake of it or for the hack of it; take it anyway you like. It ought to be like that in a weird wild wide world that is designed to grow amidst the growls of the looser, we all.
Just carry out a checksum test to see for yourself, the ravages, perversions and pervasion of WYSIWYG by examining your gains and possessions, over a steaming cup of coffee or chilled beer pertaining to you and your life. Of course, you can add anything that fancy you, including the serious and trivial. Most likely you would conclude that "what you see is what you don’t get"!

Friday 7 September 2007

SIMPLE PRANAYAMA MEDITATION

It is easy to meditate and quieten the restive mind. Once you are ready to find a calmness within. For that first, leisurely away from the hubbub and clutter, sit back alone comfortably in seclusion or in a place that you like to set out a sojourn of discovery, of yourself and the divine. Now, you have a time of your own and a space filled with possibilities that are positive, soothing and healing.
Have you ever watched how you breathed? Probably not! It will be nice if you could pay attention and watch it for sometimes. Let it go and come—your breath, the force of life to nourish you. Oh yes, it is better if you close your eyes for a minute or so to enjoy it. However, you are free to take your own time. Put no efforts to control your breath or thought. Let it be like that only.
Is not it that some thoughts are disturbing and playing truants. Accept that it is the tricks of the mind and are in reality neutral till you dwell upon them. At the time of your meditation, you need not be serious about it. Better, let it flow like the gentle breeze while you are aware of your breathing but nothing else. Feel the warmth of the air you inhale and exhale the prime cause of life. The air you breathe is cool? The air you exhale is lukewarm or may be hot? See it for yourself and experience it the way you like. Be there till you want.
Take few deep breaths—simply inhale and exhale three times and watch that gradually it is slowing down. Your muscles are now loose and you are fully relaxed. Witness it by inwardly touching every part of your beautiful body, starting from the head to the toes for twice, in as easy a manner possible. It should be like gliding over and over, halting here and there for a while.
Now, slowly open your eyes and enjoy a happiness—within and all around.
If you like, you may gift it to others, as well to find more of it.
(You may do the breathing meditation (simple Pranayama) for not more than 20 minutes in each session in the morning and evening with a light stomach and a radiating heart)