POEMS ON HIS SMILE

You told me, “See me within yourself,
“If you would save me”.
But I loved to see you
Walk unto me, ask for my letter
And smile before you pass on.

Today when the marbles tell me
You will no more walk unto me, and smile,
I know You have walked into me,
Marbles and all, and smile
At my letter before I write.


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I see two dawns everyday;
One that comes behind the hills,
Rolls down the tree-tops
Fills the dark-and-blue sky
With gold-pink-and-blue.

The other,
When I stand before you –
A new light fills me,
The darkness of doubt and disappoint
Thaws into liquid hope,
And I am remade for the day.

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How do you smile like that !
Eyes smaller, and sharper,
Lips wide, topped by puddles,
And the whole face a ripple of joy.
You drown me in it,
You uphold me to float on it;
You possess me in a hug,
And absorb me does a cotton-ball.

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SANDWICH

Have you seen a sandwich
Two pieces of bread held together
By a layer of seasoned meat
Or some veg fry ?
When I first saw one,
I cried.
You know why ?
God spoke to me –
If only you placed me between
You and your wife,
You and your neighbour,
You and your son,
I could hold the whole humanity
Together.

INSTITUTION OF MEMORY

Why do we go gaga over opening of Bhagawan’s Samadhi, or Mahasamadhi, as reverentially termed, its holiness notwithstanding?
Isn’t it celebrating what we have lost?
Isn’t it canonising after crucifixion?
Why should we call it Good Friday, the day Jesus allowed himself to be nailed on a cross, so that we understand the meaning of love?
Is it celebrating love, or celebrating our failure to recognise it when it was available?
Why aren’t we ashamed of glorifying someone who gave himself up to our insensitiveness?
But what else could we do in order to remember our shame?
Yes, what else could we do?
Do we, however, remember our shame by ending our insensitiveness?
We remember it by forgetting it.
Isn’t it a cruelty that we worship memory, but do not adopt it?
Cruelty to ourselves.

Once Bhagwan asked, “Why are people so ready to die for religion, but not live it?”
Why should we justify life in its death?
He told us several times, “Live, so that you shall not die again”.
But death seems to be a greater reality than life!
So while they live, we forget what they live for; and when they quit, we want to remember once they lived!
When they try to show us the way, we think, anyway, the Way is here; and when the guiding finger is no more here, we remember that the Way was here.
The difference is, the calendar has turned over a page.
Or, has it?
And nothing more?
From Janaki-Ram to Janaki Ramachandran, have we travelled long?

Ah, the Mahasamadhi is beautiful.
Made of imported marble, exquisitely crafted.
There is a touch of gold too.
You can go near the platform, lay your flowers at its foot.
People in their thousand jostle just to pass by it.
You feel Swami is actually present there.
We always like to freeze the water, and admire the ice .
We are filled with awe at the wealth found in a temple, and debate endlessly how to spend it, and hardly notice the Temple standing there endlessly waiting for someone to say You are beautiful.
We raise a storm over who paid how much, and when, for the marbles, and yawn at the sweaty marble maker.

He is, becomes He was, ending up in He has been.
New deluxe editions of what he said, and what he was, take the pride of our collection.
New visuals created testimony the ultimate technology we fathered.
New Arts fuse him into our tired lives, and we point to each other the new way of the golden dawn, though none of us has seen it.
Journeys become easier, dinners tastier, transport more comfortable, residences cosier, relationships faster, and the memory shorter.

A new Institution is born.

But where is He?

THE PROCESS AND THE PURPOSE

Is living a process or a purpose?
Is dying beginning of the road, or end?

To live for a purpose is to raise the purpose above living, to monitor living by the purpose.
To live for the sake of living is to cut the goose for golden eggs.
One who pays any price for living, can not tell the difference between
dinner and the dinner plate, the clay-pot and the pot-clay.
One who does not pay any price for living, asks his cook to make him
a cup of coffee with no coffee.

Can you live truthfully without a truth, and lie without denying it ?
Can you make a dish without dressing that which it is made of,
or dress that without a pan on fire ?

Can you have an eagle without a sky, and a sky without a distance from earth ?
Can you have a child without childhood, and a mother without motherhood ?

And yet we talk of ends and means, when neither can manifest without the other.
And yet we talk of becoming apart from being, while we hardly know one from the other.

Words are weeds, thoughts a bounded pool;
Roads to arriving mirror the arrival.

The beginning a blur in end, end a blur at start
Like eternity and time, each of the other a part.

The intervening space an entertaining tale,
That connects the ends, and ends the tale.

ON LEARNING LESSONS

“ You have been a long time devotee of Bhagwan, aren’t you ?” someone asked me.
“ I have tried for a long time to develop devotion”.
“ You have lived with God for many years now. You must have learnt a lot of valuable lessons at His Lotus Feet”, he insisted. The usual enthusiasts, the usual questions. I was going to break into a run; but someone whispered, `Hold’.

The question of my good friend struck me with such bluntness that it took me a few seconds to steady myself. Well, I have tried to practise devotion for God for years now, and I must have learnt a number of lessons directly from Him, and I am expected to share them with others ! Expectations are legitimate.

Can I say I haven’t learnt any lessons ? Can I say they are too personal to share ? Can lessons be too personal ? The World Teacher is here and now, to lead the mankind to its goal, and here I am calling myself His devotee, admitting I have learnt no lessons ! Too negative an attitude. This won’t do.

When I tried to look within to find an answer the small voice spoke. He asked me gently, “Lessons ? What will you do with all that ? Teach others ? Collect some admirers ? Prove to them you are a few bits above them, ahead of them ? And you deserved all this by your good work ? Go ahead.”

I was flushed. Really, what will I do with all those lessons I am supposed to collect from Him ? I wouldn’t dare do all that is suggested. But… probably improve myself. Shouldn’t I ? Listening to the great lessons God teaches, one can come closer to God, and help others too in their journey. That should be a kind of service to mankind, wouldn’t it be so ? And service to man is service to God.

Very tempting indeed. God would allow me draw some money from His bank, help me spend it in some charity work under my signature, and let me earn some credit for doing His work. Then, to expand this good work I will ask for more funds, more conveniences, more conveyances, and probably, expect in secret some promotion in my status with Him ! And when they start taking my pictures to preserve in their albums, well, what more does a humble devotee want ?

“O God!”, I cried out. “help me unlearn all my lessons, and keep my mind and heart an empty chalice.” I don’t want the lessons to jostle in my mind, and make a lot of noise I-have-learnt-this. They would absorb so much of my attention that I would fail to notice when you pass by, and fail to hear when you whisper `roll up your mat and follow me’.

If ever I have learnt any lessons, I want to unlearn them. Each piece of `lesson’ is a marble pool with some unageing gold fish swimming in it. I wouldn’t change the water for fear of infection, but forget that

the stagnant pool could be infection itself. Then I would begin to compare other pools with my pool; or worse, begin expecting you to behave in conformity with these lessons ! Then Lord, the learner, and the learning both would begin to stink. Than this I would rather have a river, ever flowing, ever singing, ever running towards the sea, filling the countryside with cool moisture to fight the heat of living, but never forming a pool. I would rather witness the ever changing landscapes, the fluttering birds, the playful clouds, the sage sunrises and sunsets, and your uncertain moods in all certainties. When you hum a tune, I break into a song; when you fancy to paint I carry your paints and brush; and when you drop your eyelids with the drooping leaves, I go into trance. Why should I stick to a lesson, and try to define you in it ?

Dear Lord, what shall I do with learning ? It would separate me from you when I start counting them, and checking them with their lessons. This learning would invest me with an identity of my own, a face different from their faces. Then I would adorn my face with marks of that which you have given me, and denied the others ! I may chuckle with satisfaction, or feel the heat of envy. That means I would face away from you, and the devil shall be too pleased, for I will see his face, not yours. When you get into a playful mood, and fancy to humour me, and my learning, I would raise my eyebrows, and doubt the sanity of what you say or do. My learning shall be my undoing, my curse. The ghost, my new lesson, shall drive away the old ghost, and while I am furiously engaged in updating my lessons, you enjoy the fun behind the screen, and pity my foolishness. Who will not, if in order to grade the fruits I throw away the juice and preserve the skins !

Dear Lord, if in one of your creative moods you begin upsetting standard ideas, concepts, theories in order to help us with an insight into their relevance to understand you, I would raise my eyebrows, search my notebook to quote you to yourself, remind you of contradictions you commit, and get stuck in the mud of my lessons ! My lessons, which I have borrowed from you, become frames in which I would confine you and hang you on my walls ! Then I would accuse you of confusing me, using unstable syllables to teach important lessons. Dear Lord, how funny, you fall a prey to your own lessons ! They draw a boundary around the boundless, separate the drop from the ocean, and judge the ocean by the standards of the drop ! I shall have none of them.

Dear Lord, learning is not being. Though the end of all learning is being, they do not suggest each other. Learning lessons, and the ability to expound them hasn’t often led to being. Then why should I spend my little life in concentrating on something which has little end value ? Why should I want to learn lessons instead of being ? Learning lessons is taking a part from the whole, to trace the whole from the part, in order that the part may find its wholeness; while being is like taking the part to the whole, and then no more see the part in the whole. Then why should I try to learn instead of being ? Does the word find its fulfillment in the meaning, or meaning in the word ? Does sound merge in silence, or silence in sound ? Dear Lord, like an omnipresent fragrance, you are everywhere; like a whisper you are everywhere; like a mother’s compassion you are everywhere. Then why should I need a process to reach the one who is never processed ? Learning is a product; how can a product define the one who never produces two similar things ? Learning is what I am; can I become what I am not by preserving what I am ? Dear Lord, free me from all the urges of collecting lessons from you, so that I may break through the imaginary boundaries, and be the boundless.

Dear Lord, let me not question your deeds, but see you in your deeds. Let me not try to find a lesson in what you do, but find you in what you do. Let me not seek to understand you in your words, but seek to find all words in you. Let me not see the flower in the bud, or bud in the flower, but see the flower and the bud in their fragrance. Probably, that is why you said being is lost in the becoming. When I look at the tree, don’t I see the seed and the flower too ? If you are present in all time and all place, where is a way to you ? Where is a lesson to learn ? Instead of defining boundaries, and listing lessons how to cross them, can’t I just melt into you ? Does an ice-cube need to have knowledge of water before melting into it ?

Someone chuckled, and, “You should be practical in your mind, my friend. All these men of God, who have left legacies behind for us, teach us great lessons to reach God. Can you, which is the mankind, do without them ? Can you say they have no relevance for you ?”

Dear Lord, I still don’t think they teach us anything. The puddles realized that they are in fact part of the sea, and the part is in the whole. They have left behind what they saw, not that one learn to see, but be to see. In other words, one can only be. All their words have only one centre, being. The moment I am aware that I am in your eternal embrace, I ceases to be, only you are. I can not be where you are, and you are not where I am. Being is lost in becoming, so becoming must return to Being. There is no seeing apart from being; and since one does not learn to be, one does not learn to see. When you are around me, why should I ask to learn to see you ? And what do I learn ? Can any lesson define you ?

Dear Lord, then what am I asking of you ? Nothing, and everything too. Don’t try to teach me a method to see you. Do not try to show me a path to reach you; I may be too unsure to recognize the method, and too blind to see the path. Here I am, standing before you, poor as a rat. You are at the start of the road, at the end of it, and all along it. Then why should I pretend to use a road to reach you ?

The small voice within me heaved a sigh, I hope a sigh of relief, and said, “If you can recognise the end at the beginning, God bless you.” And Lord, should I ask for your blessings ? Let me be a part of it.

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HAIL MOTHER

Dear Mother,
You come to us once a year
For a brief ten days to our choice,
To bless us do what we want.
In a dazzle we wrap you,
For we want to anaesthetize what we know
With what we want to feel !
In blares of cacophony we sing for you
For we want to silence the despair inside us;
We install you in a market place,
And cry halt to all traffic
That the terrible traffic within rage on;
And when we get rid of you
In a welter of published holiness
We celebrate funeral of all holiness!
You allow yourself a smile we give you,
You ride the lion we make for you,
You pretend to kill the demon we dress for you,
And we take, you bless us well;
For what else can you do?
You are our kindest Mother,
While we insult you in our women,
We outrage you in our daughters, and sisters,
We bleed you in our neighbours,
And ask you Mother Dear,
Fulfill our lives !

Mother, you have been doing for love
What we ask of you;
Now for a change,
Why not force us do
What you want us do ?


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IN MEMORIUM

Your face is all over the place,
The little haven I call my home;
And your gentle smiles
Still light up each curve in the air
That go round and round
Rubbing on the old walls.
Your hard breathings still heard
Over the edge of your laughter
Make us aware even today
Pains are painless when you look beyond
Why, how and what
To merge this with that.
Your quiet footnotes
On things and people
Still draw us away
When we plunge in a reckless way
To script prescriptions for the world
Keeping the Doctor at bay.
You were quiet in your vocality
Upholding in your strength,
Fierce in your loyalty
And assuring in your sincerity.
To call you a friend is
To notice a pearl among sands,
For life produces things that endure
Not in the backyard of kings
But between the lips of leaves.
Greatness hardly notices goodness
For goodness hardly envies the great.
You didn’t want to be needed,
But when you weren’t around
They knew they missed you.
The story of living a life
Shall continue to be told;
But when I shall begin, Once upon a time…
I shall halt twice
To choose the next word.

(On sudden demise of a friend)

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ON ASKING QUESTIONS

There is the story of a young college boy who was sitting in an apple orchard, and counting ripe apples about to detach from the trees. Suddenly one of them fell with a thud right in front of him. He jumped back a step, and looked at it. A strange idea came to his mind: why did the apple fall down ? Someone inside him, the voice of convention, asked him, ‘did you think it should go up ?’ ‘Ah’, he told himself, ‘why not ?’ He then picked up a big pebble, and threw it up. That also came down. Then he saw a bird taking off from a tree and fly away. It did not fall down. ‘There must be a way to explain why an apple or a pebble fall down on earth, and not a bird’, thought the boy. Rest of the story is history. Mankind will forever remain grateful to that twenty-three year old for asking these questions.

There is another story of a sixteen year old sitting by his first floor window watching the lethargic lane in front of his house. Presently a funeral procession passed by. Six people were carrying a sleeping man on a bamboo frame, and some others were following mourning. He heard someone telling someone else so and so died an hour ago. This boy began to wonder, ‘Died ! what does that mean ? He is sleeping peacefully. Then who died ?’ He was determined to find out who dies in death, and who lives. He lay down on the floor on his back, and began telling himself, ‘I am dead….I am dead..’ After a while he felt his breath was stopping, and body becoming stiff, but he was as alive as ever. At that moment he realized the supreme truth of life, and the bully Venkataramana of Tiruchuzhi, Tamilnad, was metamorphosed into a Ramana Maharshi.

The history of mankind has been made by such people, who dared to ask unconventional questions, and had the courage and stubbornness to pursue the answer. Asking questions reveals a mind that seeks to know, a mind which is the seed of civilizations, of all philosophies and sciences. Knowledge is born out of a sense of wonder and mystery. It is man alone who wants to know. Face to face with the unknown, he asks questions, and shows the courage to contemplate them. This universal urge to know embedded in man has been epitomized by Tennyson in his Ulysses, ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’.

Questions are born out of our interactions, generally, with things, incidents, and people around us. Out of this confrontation we deduce principles of science and spirit. Our understanding of the principles reveals the quality of our interactions with them. Just as what we know depends on what we intend to know, how we live manifests how we intend to live. Intention can open the gate to the mystery and wonder of the unknown, or lack of it may shut the gate. The present moment is a point in the flow of time, through which flows all time. Therefore only a minute fraction of the present lives in the present. The riddles of the present may have their answers in the time gone by, or in the time to come. So face to face with the now, if we refuse to expand into the ever-now, we shall be severely
handicapped, and insufficient solutions we arrive at might prove to be dangerous disabilities. Thus the questions we contemplate are a significant indication of our intention to adventure into the unknown, or call it a bluff.

The falling of apple has been a well known phenomenon like dying. After billions of people had seen billions of apple falling, and billions of people dying a couple of them questioned what they saw. Do we really know what we presume we know? These two boys were not sure, and asked ‘why does the apple fall?’, and ‘who dies in death?’ When a mother carried her dead son to the Buddha, and asked him to give life back to him, she did not ask the same question, ‘who dies in death’ but ‘why should my son die’, and the Enlightened One taught her what was the right question to ask. The same Buddha as a very young and accomplished Prince had seen a dying man, and his question was closer to that of Venkataramana, ‘is there a way to escape suffering and death?’ The questions they asked metamorphosed them into a Newton, a Ramana Mahrshi, and a Buddha. But the interesting part of this is that there was no metamorphosis; no alchemy changed the DNA of a Newton, a Venkataramana, or a Prince Gautam. The answers were always available for a seeker, it only needed opening a different door to discover themselves. Though asking the right question is important, to endeavour to arrive at the answer isn’t any less important. If the traveller can’t live long in uncertainties, he quits. This reflects the quality of life he has lived. So our questions reveal not only what we have been, but what we intend to be. Therefore true education is educating our intention.

When misfortunes strike us, we are prone to question them, for we believe they are unwarranted. The most often asked question is ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ or, ‘why am I singled out for punishment while people around me escape with impunity?’ We might even point an accusing finger to an ‘unjust’ God, and berate him for behaving in an autocratic manner. We question everything he represents, and declare this God has no business even to exist if he cannot live up to our standards. It is a cruel universe we are thrown into, and a blind thoughtless power rules the roost. This is the general outline of Thomas Hardy’s concept of man’s tragic predicament. Hardy tries to wrest some justification for life in an unjust world, without much success. Shakespeare tells us our unjust behaviour prompted by hubris unleashes a whole set of powers that takes the affairs of life out of our hands. Tolstoy takes a religious view of things, and suggests suffering in the hands of a mysterious power ennobles a man if we learn the virtue of surrender. The reader of Mahabharata sees life as a complex story of relationships with the known and the unknown, and one must stick to right living in spite of challenges, for the patterns are set by a wise God who has an active interest in the affairs of the world. Ramayana, a story of great personal sacrifices, sets the value of principles higher than personal choices. Mankind has always asked a great variety of questions, and arrived at either a blind wall, or ever shifting boundaries. While the ‘unwarranted’ ‘misfortune’ might be intended to lead us into the mysteries of life, we may choose to challenge the very possibility and get entangled in the morass of life, more and more. The book of Job is an interesting book in the Old Testament. Job is kind, honest, generous, God-fearing, yet he is crushed. Everything is taken away from him in a day, his property, his friends, his health, his family. His estranged friends advise him to admit he was a sinner, and the visitation of God’s punishment was just. Job refuses to admit that he had erred on God’s commandments. He is upset, angry, and insists God’s action has been unjust. He wants God to justify Himself. God finally speaks to him does he have full knowledge of life’s mysteries? Then why does he claim full understanding? Job accepts he has been asking the wrong questions. God of course restores his former status to a chastened Job, and blesses him with a longer life.

There is a similar situation in the Ramayana. Rama shoots the fatal arrow at Vali hiding behind a tree. The fallen king is surprised and outraged. How could Ram do this ! Born into the noblest of traditions how could Rama, accepted as an upholder of the most virtuous conduct of right living, do this dastardly act ! There issues a long conversation between the two about intricacies of right living, but Vali is not convinced. But when finally Rama offers to restore his life and his kingdom, Vali denies the gift and chooses death instead. It begins to dawn on him that whatever he has lost, he has lost in good hands, and he has no will to retrieve an apparently ill-spent life time. He understands Rama has a point in killing him the way he did, he no more insists on Rama to justify himself. He dies a reconciled man. Unlike Job, he dies a wiser man, because he begins to see the futility of a wrong question.

The Bhagavat Geeta offers us another similar situation. Arjuna asks why should he kill his own kith and kin. He prefers to forego a kingdom, and a heaven to indulging in this massive homicide. He is even ready to live the rest of his life on begged food than drawing blood of his guru and grandfather. But Arjuna was a man of sterling character and wise disposition. Even at this moment of unusual mental turbulence, he is listens to his friend, who does not mince words to call him a fool. Krishna tells him he has asked a wrong question. Then starts a series of questions and answers amidst the din of a huge war in preparation, the neighing horses, the trumpeting elephants, and the hissing bowstrings. At the end of the long conversation Krishna ensures that Arjuna has heard with undivided attention all that he said , and rewards him with the vision of the Cosmic Form. Job’s questions were not answered, Vali withdrew his questions, but Arjuna got all his questions answered. These three characters represent three positions we assume face to face with the mysteries of life, obedience, understanding, and wisdom. Job returned to his earlier position of balanced happiness, Vali was elevated to the joy of transcendence, but Arjuna received enlightenment. First two refrained from asking wrong questions, and the third asked the right questions.

When we feel crushed by misfortunes, that is ‘unwarranted’ situations, we immediately infer God has caused them, and unjustly. This primary position defines our subsequent responses. Once we see cruelty and tyranny in the universal order, we lose contact with the creative forces inherent in the order, and our questions become mere complaints. We no more need an ‘answer’, for a complaint isn’t a question. We deal with the unknown on equal terms, sometimes assume a position superior to it, and demand it function at the level of our variable understanding. We are in an unenviable position now: we are aware of the presence of a power far superior to us, for it has caused great distress to us, which we can not wish away, and still we insist it function to our approval !

Instead, what happens if I accept God hasn’t caused the distress, though I know not who has? When I cease to quarrel with God, he immediately shifts from the enemy camp to the camp of an ally, and I immediately stop questioning the modus operandi of the unknown forces presided over by God. I begin to contemplate a new question – how can I make use of God to rebuild myself. If God is on my side, I refuse to be destroyed, and with a new confidence rally forth, with God’s help, to rise from the debris. Looking at the whole operation from a practical point of view, even if God explains why, for example, I met with an accident, do I feel more comfortable in my hospital bed ? My misery remains the same, I go through the same convalescing period, borrow the same money to pay my medical bills, experience the same collateral inconvenience, except the ineffective information why it happened. And since I have no dependable means of verifying the veracity of God’s answer, I have to believe in him. So what is the difference between misery without knowledge of the cause, and misery with it? My concern is to be free from misery, not to know why it happened. It is a very simple deduction that if God can help me expedite my recovery then I should welcome it rather than a discourse from him about how he is just in plotting an accident for me. That was exactly the position of the Buddha about the existence of God. While our greatest effort should be directed towards achieving freedom from misery, and that can be achieved by simple eight steps, why should we spend sleepless nights and sweating days in our cellars in endless arguments for and against the existence of God? So why not ask God to help solve my problems, or ask what lessons He wants me to learn from my misfortune, or how can I rebuild myself. By this I can convert an apparent punishment into a tangible reward.

We face a lot of misunderstanding among relatives, kins, and colleagues. We misread each other’s motives and intentions, and hold on to our own as right, react and create a whole whirlpool of miseries. Whatever is true with individuals, is also true with nations. Some political commentator has said if about half a dozen statesmen had taken a week’s leave the day before the First World War started, the face of the world would have been much different now. What he means is, instead of projecting our prejudices and selfish intentions into situations, and creating problems out of them, if we perceive in them an opportunity to promote a more mature mind, or understanding, it would be a grateful history. A great Hasidim master says if one does not grow better, they grow worse.

I am tempted to illustrate by a personal experience what I have been trying to say. Once I had some difference of opinion with a friend. To me a certain action of his and motive appeared utterly unjust. But I was unable to convince him for obviously he wasn’t prepared to accept my point of view. A more serious confrontation was imminent, and as a result a breakaway. I was terribly unhappy that we failed to reconcile and stay together. The break would raise a host of other related questions that I would have to address. All the time I was asking a simple question: why should he be so foolish to behave this way. The more did I contemplate this the more stupid he appeared, and I grew angrier until one day I happened to ask myself a different question, am I right to demand he sees the way I do while I refuse to give any ground to him? Am I here to justify myself to him, denying him the same opportunity? Is it worth breaking away from a two decade long friend for sake of establishing my controversial justness? Can’t I let him go his way and hold my peace? Isn’t life too precious to spill on such trifles? Suddenly all strains melted, and whatever was till then an all important moral issue of right and wrong appeared naïve and childish.

What caused this turn around? He remained the same, the facts remained the same, the world remained the same, but the problem vanished, for I taught myself to ask a different question, which was important for me, he accept me, or I accept him? Between us the world changed, as I changed the level of my understanding. Einstein once said, ‘if you can not change facts, reinterpret them’. To save oneself from miseries, quite often, is to transcend them. When I remain the centre of my world, I fail to notice other centres. When I expect others to concede grounds for me I refuse to see their expectations of me. When we don’t notice the essential fact that life is a mutuality, we are only behaving in a very irrational manner. If a bird must see a larger ground, it must climb higher.

We need complete knowledge of the mysteries of life to create a complete package of answers to our problems. To arrive at this ultimate reference point one has to continuously upgrade one’s consciousness, expand understanding, and ask fundamental questions. Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba has defined these fundamental questions as, ‘Who am I? Where am I right now? What am I doing here? How long am I going to be here?’ Once we begin asking these questions, we realise that the story of life takes a different hue and secondary questions just fall away from attention. The whole truth can not be learnt through partial truths, it is the other way round. The partial truths have any semblance to truth as they are only partial reflections of the whole truth. Our consciousness, the ground on which reflections occur has to be on a continuous expanding programme in order that it can travel closer to the whole truth. Therefore Ramana Maharshi used to persuade his questioners to approach through the whole. When someone asked “Maharshi, how can I be in peace when such a thing has happened to me?”, he replied, “Find out to whom it has happened, and who asks this question”. Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba gives us the same technique, “A time will come when we shall find that the soul is infinitely better than its surroundings. In the struggle through what we call environments, there will come a time when we shall find that these environments were almost zero in comparison with the power of the soul”. This is the objective of all our questions: to rise above the environments, and attain ‘the power of the soul’.

This of course does not indicate we could belittle the environment just by denying it. Light is not gained by denying darkness, but by refusing darkness any finality. Dark nights put nerve into our journey into light, nevertheless, we can not judge light by its temporary absence. Though the shafts of the sun knows not what darkness is, and the shroud of the night does not have sun in its vocabulary, each suggests the other. Arjuna received the purified vision to see the Cosmic Form because even in the urgency of a battlefield, he ploughed Krishna with extremely relevant and unbiased questions. Therefore from the position of ‘My feet and hands are shaking, I can not hold the bow’, he travelled to win the great battle.

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THE CONFLUENCE (To 2009)

Shall I say farewell my friend,
and ask you stay behind
that I may run riot
on pastures untouched yet !
but when I scan you
I see how we have grown together
on all the green and the yellow,
and built the story
you and I alone know.
And gradually
we have merged our imagined
frontiers to understand
each other, revel in each other.
All my dusty yesterdays,
and the dew-washed today,
are my tomorrow’s face
which mirrors the great confluence,
God’s most glorious tale
told to man.