WANDERLUST: My Journey of Re-affirmation...

Between Mirrors of

Life and living, I reflect

'Now', eternally.

Some times as the life changes gears, the path that you have taken takes a turn that leaves you wondering - where I am going? As I reflect about last few months, these lines from "Songs of the Mist" comes to my mind...

"You sit here wondering where you are going to go today. Life all around you is new, based on the sensation of living but the moment you bring yourself down to thinking you realize that it is not one straight line. You start with one point and just as you are about to reach, you have another crowding your space. You force that out of your path and you get pushed into the other. And you pursue that further, feeling what is it like to be, how that one made you smile, how that one made you cry, and you are overwhelmed in feeling the highs and lows, but then find yourself somewhere down in the dark depths of unknown, as if that a person is taking you home but you never had a home..." - Calliope on the banks of Holy River Ganges (Page - 135)

It takes a life time

For a sigh to die; Living

Still flowers in pain

And in situation like this, you have to have that undying faith, that out there, there is some one with a cosmic design in which you have a particular place and with your own karma you fill that particular colour required in universal fabric of cosmos with the thread of your living in 'now'.

But as is the case usually, we are not enlightened enough to know that design, so we have doubts, waver with uncertainty of going nowhere and these are the times, I have come to realise, when one has to reaffirm his / her faith in divinity, in the universal energy that is within all of us. And time to time, we need to touch base, reach out to hold that cosmic energy within us from external sources. The last few months have been one such period of exercises, in which I went all around Tamil Nadu to reconnect through service, meditation and spiritual travels.

My Journey of Re-affirmation 

Faith:

There is a beautiful temple of Sai Baba on East Coast Road of Chennai, where I have been many times before, but I needed something more. So one day me and my friend reached early morning at the famous Sai Baba temple on the banks of Bay of Bengal and I asked for the way. I not only get to know where I have to go but also I found a fellow traveller on my path. I, quite literally, handed over my baggage to him and got ready to walk...

Service:

There was a group of pilgrimages, coming all the way from Bihar (on a round trip of almost 3500 Kms), who reached Kanchipuram, famously known as Kasi of South, and my friend took me along to serve them food. 

There are only two types of daan (To Give) that has a direct connection with the cosmic design and your place in it. One is to feed some one (Ann Daan) and the other is to actively / physically do something for the upliftment of down trodden and needy. 

The whole day we spent feeding more than 50 pilgrims in one of the ashrams was more than one can get by visiting numerous places of worship.

Meditation:

When I came to Chennai for the first time, I have had a great personal experience with Goddess Parvati of Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. After almost 20 years of that experience, I had the desire to see her again. We started one early morning, reached Tiruchy for over night stay and then next morning reached Madurai. 

The thousand pillar temple with its grand gopuram and golden dwaja stambha (Flag Staff) was glittering with golden sparkle, turning the dark long corridors into colourful golden hue, being reflected in rainbow colors of the mural on the roof. 

There was the same connect, which had not diminished over two decades of my absence in these premises. The huge wet rose flower garland in my hand looked like the rosary bead and within my heart, there was a peace that comes from knowing that all is well all around. 

The walk within and within the walls of the ancient corridors with huge sculptures of dancers, devas and Dancing Shiva filled the space, emptied by darkness of unknown.

And as I sit here, writing about the journey in Bengaluru, I reflect upon the ripples of time that have flowed by, and remember again Calliope's thoughts...

"...in times of desperation you try to seek out who has the reins of your life. You go beyond the cause and effect and seek within that deepest cognition, with all your logic and understanding of how you came to be here." - Calliope (Page - 137)

In eternity

We live. Come from. Life is one

Series of footprints.

__

Shashi 

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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TALKING POINT: Gandhi Ji's speech about God and faith at Kingsley Hall - London 1931

It was great to hear Gandhi Ji’s voice and the clarity of his conviction first hand. His simple ideas in trying to prove the existence of God in one word – Simple but then somehow one feels that it’s also true. I liked this talk because of his voice which transported me to the era, where our freedom of India was born. Below is the transcription of the talk.

Transcription of the Talk

There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses.

But it is possible to reason out the existence of god to an unintelligible exchange. Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules, or why, and how he rules. And yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules.

In my tour last year in Mysore I met many poor villagers and I found upon inquiry that they did not know who ruled Mysore. They simple said some god ruled it. If the knowledge of these poor people was so limited about their ruler, I, who am infinitely lesser in respect to god than they to their ruler need not be surprised if I do not realize the presence of god, the king of kings.

Nevertheless I do feel as the poor villagers felt about Mysore, that there is orderliness in the universe. There is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings. And thanks to the marvellous researches of Sir J.C. Bose, it can now be proved that even matter is life.

That law then which governs all life is god. Law and the lawgiver are one. I may not deny the law or the lawgiver because I know so little about it or him, just as my denial or ignorance of the existence of an earthly power will avail me nothing. Even so, my denial of god and his law will not liberate me from its operation. Whereas, humble and mute acceptance of divine authority makes life’s journey easier even as the acceptance of earthly rule makes life under it easier.

I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying; there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together; that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing power of spirit is god. And since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, he alone is.

And if this power is benevolent or malevolent, I see it as purely benevolent. For, I can see that in the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of untruth, truth persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that god is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme good. But, he is no god who merely satisfies the intellect, if he ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in ever smallest act of his goodness. This can only be done through a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever prove use.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is inferable, it is proved not by extreme extraneous evidence, but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of god within. Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. This realization is preceded by an immovable faith. He who would in his own person, test the fact of god’s presence can do so by a living faith.

And since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence, the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. Exercise of faiths will be the safest where there is the clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love.

I confess that I have no argument to convince through reason. Faith transcends reason. All that I can advise is not to attempt the impossible.
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Transcript Curtsy: Amartya who posted this at his blog, click here to read his posting...

ॐ नमः शिवाय 
Om Namah Shivaya