An Autobiography of God

                                            

I don’t remember when I was not.

I don’t either remember when things were not.

They have always been my expression, my exploration.

Sometimes, in a philosophical mood, I wonder am I two, three, four or one?

But soon I give up the meaningless effort, for I can see the differences exist, yet they do not.

When those things, my many faces, look at me in asking eyes, I want to tell them what I feel, but it is so difficult to make them understand. Nevertheless, I love the game. I make them ask questions, pretend answering them, yet I know full well it’s just a game. I am not a cheat. I mean what I do. I do what I mean; ah, that’s the more difficult part.

Sometimes I tell myself, the game is no more fun, and so let me wind it up.

But I don’t. It would feel like singing a joyful song in silence! The song would jump out of me by itself, and I love to see the fireworks. Though I know I am in every cadence, every vibrating sound, experiencing it is exhilarating.  That keeps me one in all.

I love them all, though I can’t decipher what is the difference between loving and not loving. They are virtually not two stages, yet they are two. When I think, I think in them as well; when I love, I give and receive it too. The number game is a game too, at times exciting, at times dull and uninteresting. Yet I always find something to go on.

Those things, out there, animals and humans, hills, brooks, birds, trees, the stars and the humble grass, aren’t they lovely things? I would watch them tirelessly, humming to myself only one line ‘I love you’ in various moods and melodies. I only wish they reciprocate more often than not. But when they don’t, my song becomes more and more powerful, and I like that. One part of me yearns for other parts, though there is hardly any distance between them. They think their being there is rather vague, undefined, accidental and confusing. Well, perhaps it appears so when they don’t look at me. That gives me a chance to do something for them to notice me, and hear my song.  

What do I do exactly? Well, it depends on how much distance they see. At times I work them up so much that they change their shapes rapidly, as in a war. Sometimes it is a drawn out disharmony in which the confusion builds up slowly but increasingly, for a big shake. When they are threatened by complete breakdown, they call out loud ‘is there anyone out there?’  Then I pick up my flute, and the flute does the rest to bring calm into the storm. The flute is a wonderful tool. I love to use it whenever I want to make myself heard.

Sometimes I would leave the game in their hands to see how they umpire it. There are always some who can hear the flute even in a storm. They are a little bit closer to me. When the game goes wild, they blow whistles, show yellow card to someone, and green to another, but on the whole bring down the din that they can hear the flute. Then the character of the game alters.

But I have a problem.

I would like them to respond to me as I respond to them. I would like them to feel they are part of me as I feel they are part of me. I would like them appreciate the beauty I have created for them out of myself, and understand that if they hurt anything, I am hurt. When I sing a song I would like them to join it and sing with me. When I smile from a flower, I would like them to smile at it; when I come down in raindrops and the ears of corn bend in ecstasy, I would like them to drench in the sweetness of it and hug the stalks of corn; when I groan in a lonely soul, I would like them to hear me groan and envelop me with empathy. Though all this is my game plan to make it feel real, the spirit hardly picks up.

I fail to understand why a part of me is so unlike me!

That is it. Then I change my game plan. I go and live among them, my own parts, with the apparent limitations they have. They of course notice the difference, and crowd around me for different purposes. In my eagerness I even whisper to them my reality, and assure them, all my parts, we are virtually one and same. They hear me, but walk away as if they heard nothing! I take upon myself their self-created pains, suffering and frustrations just to make them see the obvious, all these symptoms point towards only one cause: their denial to feel one with me. I don’t know why, they are not quite impressed. Probably they think, what they know cannot be denied, and what they don’t is suspect.

But something far stranger than I ever expected can happen. Some of them, my own parts, tell me in no uncertain terms that I am not welcome among them! They call me an intruder, and a nuisance. Then they hang me on a cross, or give me poison to drink, or put a bullet in my heart! For me it appears very funny, and I oblige them willingly. However, I don’t oblige always. I have to put good sense into them. So if that is possible by a couple of hits, I do that. One of the biggest such things I engineered was the Mahabharata war. But even then they failed to see their ignorance and my compassion. But when some of them can see through my game, and plead to come back with me, I am greatly pleased. I always have my compensations.

I am quite amused and amazed at my own realization. When I separate a part of myself from myself, for the fun of exploring myself, I unconsciously also create pain and suffering! They are however meant to act as intensifiers. When I create diversities, I invest them with diverse inclinations, and the freedom to follow them. Their new found freedom gives them diverse identities. That makes them develop and live at cross purposes, looking away from me. All this happens under my eyes, and I don’t prevent it.

Why don’t I prevent it? Ah, how can I prevent myself from being myself? However unwelcome it may be, they are my parts, spontaneous projections of my love, and Love is essentially freedom. Love is my nature. Being free, love does not impose itself on anyone, it would rather be hurt than cause any hurt. I don’t remember how often I have been hurt; I don’t remember too those many exceptional moments which healed me too. I take it in my stride, and go out again and again to meet them, the confused mass of myself. How is this confusion created? Do I create it? No, I don’t; I always send out of myself pure joy, pure light. How does joy and light turn into confusion and darkness?

They call me God! What does that mean? Something powerful? Something that gives them whatever they ask for? Something that turns the storm away? … Well, I don’t care. They give me a hat, I wear it until someone else comes and takes it away. They even give me a crown of thorns, and entertain themselves. Some even call me an apparition, and dismiss me as good riddance. I see the underlying irony, and have a hearty laugh. But strange, the stronger the irony, the closer I go to them. They are after all my parts. I am always around them, caressing them with the gentle fingers of wind, hugging them with the strong arms of light, patting them to slumber with the magic of night, tickling them with the dreams of death – with the single purpose that they recognise the whole. They choose not to, and prefer to be where they are, what they are, mistaken identities! When their willing ignorance overtakes them, they call out for my interference forgetting that all the time they are in my embrace! Sometimes I laugh at this incongruity; sometimes I pity them, but in the limitless expanse of my omnipresence, I feel lonely. I guess all of them out there feel terribly lonely too, and are scared to amend it.

True, there isn’t a place where I am not, there isn’t a thing I touch not, there isn’t a knowing I know not, but all this all-pervasiveness isn’t interesting at all. I want to play some game, the game of unknowing, of being in blindfold, of hiding and seeking, to put some life into the lifeless eternity. I can’t remain passive, asleep, doing nothing. But doing builds up a multilevel theatre. Being is lost in becoming until becoming gathers itself up in the being. This keeps the theatre buzzing with activity, and I like that. Being is me, becoming is me, and in the tangle of being-becoming I enjoy losing myself, and finding myself. The child runs away from her mother, stands by the side of the bed, covers her eyes with her tiny palms, and thinks mother can’t find her! The mother too stands a few steps away from the bed with the child in full view, and wonders loudly where her dear child is, until the child uncovers her eyes in disgust of not being found out! Then the mother and child hug each other, and dance a few steps in the joy of dissolution of the pretence! What a game, and I love it.

Thus, I love to cry, and then comfort myself; I love to sing, and then appreciate myself; I write the script, and love to play different roles, both the protagonist, and the antagonist. I sometimes wonder, is it honesty? If I write each dialogue, and make them recite it, haven’t I taken away their freedom? Then how can I claim love is freedom? Oh no, I provide a lot of freedom for the characters. I allow them to choose the plot. Within the plot, in order to keep it logical, real and unified, I help them perform to a result. I don’t want the performance to be aimless, and ambiguous. Within the performance I allow opportunities for sudden twists and turns. Once the character chooses a certain line of action, my dialogues for that situation takes effect. In fact every time they exercise a choice, the rules and the suitable dialogues for the situation come into operation. They have no freedom to play with that, no one can break up the unity between the choice, the consequent action, dialogues and the outcome. So, I am quite fair and honest. I have to be just and reasonable with myself.

I revel in diversity, because the whole operation is a self-exploration, for the whole as well as for the parts. The parts must find their whole, and the whole justify itself in the parts. It is like a piece of painting in which each pigment of colour carries the message of the entire picture. It’s like a family tree in which each member carries some signature of the pedigree. It’s like a little bar that goes up into the sky and bursts into a million stars of different hues. The bar would love to be many, though the many carry the same seed.   

I love to ask questions to myself, that keeps me busy. I ask myself, okay, I love to be many; but why can’t the many be just like each other? That would save me a lot of running around. I am like someone who owns a lot of property, in fact he does not know how much land he has, how much money he has, how many flocks he has. One day he goes out to explore his own wealth, to count the sacks of coins stacked in his many stores, and the many flocks grazing in his own fields. Then he is amazed at his own wealth, and decides to distribute them to others. He sets one up as a smith, another as a potter, a third as a grower of grains, a fourth a builder, another a shepherd, a thinker, a poet, a musician – all with a part of his wealth. Then he goes to a potter, and picks up a pot; goes to a smith, picks up a shining stick; goes to a grower of grains, and tastes the bread he has made for him; goes to a builder who has made a lovely little cottage for him by the side of a dancing brook; then he goes to a musician who plays an enthralling raga in his flute he has made out of a piece of hollow bamboo. He feels fulfilled, his heart bursts with joy and happiness, which he did not know earlier, and distributes his joy  and happiness again among all of them. The wealthy man has now homes everywhere. He sits back in a garden chair and thanks the moment he decided to create so many faces of his wealth he wasn’t aware he had.

I had another question for myself. If I distributed so much joy and happiness among all of them, my diverse parts, what happened to it all? Why do I have to go out often to remind them what I gave them? Ah, the answer is quite simple. All those who received my gifts, in fact I took all care to see that I don’t leave out any, started installing the gifts in their homes as decorations! Wealth is meant to be invested and multiplied to keep it growing and active. But they did not invest my gifts, and gradually forgot them in the dark corners of their homes. Some of them even took a broomstick, and cleaned up the cluttered spaces. Then the pots lost their beauty, the sticks their shine, the bread its taste, the shepherd lost his flock, and the musician forgot how to make a flute, all because they did not invest my gifts. 

But I don’t do that. I invest myself more and more in love, in truth, in beauty, in peace, in compassion, and periodically go out distributing the dividends. They accept the gifts, most of them, but very few understand the value of reinvestment. Others go home and flush them down the drain! I want to see all of them wealthy, and happy, but sadly most of them choose to remain poor! That means more work for me. I can’t give them up, for all of them belong to me; I cannot wind up the game, for then I have to start it all over again, only to witness a repeat performance! Between my joy of giving, and sadness of watching a colossal disuse of my gifts, I live an enviable eternity to eternity. I can’t afford to be tired, seek a holiday to doze off, feel slighted, or get angry, because I play the game with myself. One cannot get rid of a part of himself, only heal them. That’s what I am forever busy doing.

This is only a very small part of my autobiography. Now a days I am too busy to continue with it.

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