When the symbol and the symbolized become one, it becomes an emblem. If not, it remains an epilogue. In this sense light is an emblem because it is a symbol of love and hope; love for life, for vibrancy, for munificence, and hope for liberation. Light is Nature's Prozac, so to say. To paraphrase Thomas Fuller, light is God's eldest daughter who brightens your path as you light another's path. There is no region, race, or religion, under the sun, that doesn't recognise light as an expression of goodness and buoyancy. Some people like the Swedes, the Dutch, the Jews, and the Indians are, however, more eloquent in their expression. The Jews lead the pack with an eight day celebration of lights called Hanukkah. The Dutch observe St. Martin's Day on November 11 with children visiting community households carrying lighted lanterns in their hands. The Swedes honor St. Lucia on December 13 with wreaths of lighted candles.
Light is the only constant in this otherwise changeful cosmos. It needs no donning and doffing perhaps because it doesn't get polluted. Yes, light cannot be polluted. Man has polluted the earth, the air, the water, the space, and above all his mind, but he can never pollute light. The photon, its smallest unit, is a massless elusive entity which behaves as a particle and wave at the same time. And moves, if not polarized, in all dimensions in one time! It moves with a velocity nothing can ever attain, much less overtake. Also it doesn't decay. Yes light is deathless. Nothing whatsoever can kill it. Yet man the mortal, has the wherewithal to attain to immortal light. He has had a long tradition of people who have attained to light. Such people are called Avatars, Prophets, Messiahs, Buddhas. In this blog I am going to talk about one such Avatar from India. Rama is his name.
In India we observe Dipawali, literally, an array of lamps, to celebrate the return, from exile, of Rama the ruler of Ayodhya, after fourteen years. However, there is a frame story to it. He doesn't simply return but returns with his wife after killing Ravana, the ruler of Lanka and the abductor of his wife Sita. Whether or not, it is a historical tale, let the pedants and the movers and shakers, battle it out. After all, History is Hi story! You can not even exit history without re-entering history. Like most stories, history begins in romance but it has, unfortunately, a very short half-life. After which, a continuous amaranthine argument ensues which more often than not, turns bloody. For me, it suffices that the tale of Rama is a historical success which provides a symphony of echoes, heard and unheard. You will have to tread the path cautiously with me because it is a very powerful pathway which promises freedom to anybody who is a willing participant in the whole unfolding.
Raman Maharshi advised people to quizz themselves endlessly about who am I? till one realises the essence of this exhortation inside oneself. I don't know how many people succeeded in their effort, simply because I was not fortunate enough to be near him. But I do know of some people who were benefitted when they were called upon to ask to themselves Who is Rama? Where does he live? The year was 1954; place was a nondescript amroodon ka bagicha, about 30 kilometres from Lucknow; and the man who enjoined this discipline upon us was Swami Sadanand Jr. Rama literally means a pleasing being in whom the mind likes to roam. We were asked to sit silently, eyes closed, legs folded, spine straight, for a minimum of 40 minutes, to micro-examine our body from toe-to-top, for a spot where we felt a pull.
It took most of us, more than a month's practice to have the experience that whenever we reached the ajna chakra between the eye brows, we felt a pull. After some time the pull, sort of, sucked us inside where we felt like we were in a different dimension. Swami ji then explicated to us that the ajna chakra was the doorway to the sahasrar, which is our body's lighthouse that perennialy sheds soft milky light. And sahasrar is the Ayodhya where Rama ever dwells. Ayodhya, literally means against which no battle can be waged. Who can wage a battle against the light that is your sahasrar? Light is invincible. Rama, the eternal being, the blissful being, is ever present in Ayodhya, your Ayodhya, your sahasrar, as eternal light. As the time of disbanding was drawing near, Swamiji was keen that we should know the place where, as a rule, we dwell most of the time. So he told us to locate the position in our body where we felt most secure.
Fortunately for us, it didn't take us long to find the second point of our sojourn. It was the area of the pelvis, almost where the tailbone is, where we felt like we had been thrown back into the womb. This is where the muladhar chakra, the basal energy center, is positioned. If the sahasrar is the seat of spiritual strength, the muladhar is the seat of physical strength. You must have experienced that whenever you need to push something hard, the extra strength is provided by the lowest point of your torso. To survive on earth, we need strength, brute strength. This comes from muladhar. This chakra is the most earthy. When we live in this chakra, we sort of, grab the earth and fortify ourselves tenuously, lest we should be torn apart from the earth.
Now the name for the pelvic region is लंक, in sanskrit. Yes, Lanka means the loins. The seed mantra for muladhar is लं, which means to secure oneself. So in Lanka we strive to secure ourselves that is, we make ourselves secure against the other. Ofcourse the only way we are conversant with, to make ourselves secure, is with power, pelf, property and deception. We often go into overdrive to achieve this end. Hence there is always a propensity for combat, competition, and conflict. Whenever we feel threatened, it is not unusual for us, in moments of privacy, to curl ourselves and bury our heads in the loins. Also when we are secure, we think of multiplying ourselves. Just at a nodding distance from it, is another chakra, called the svadisthan chakra. Its seed mantra is वं which stands for वमन, that is, vomit. So a part of the energy that we store in the root chakra, is spent here, in propagating ourselves.
The next energy center is called the manipur chakra which as the name suggests, is the apex of the Lankan region. You may as well call it the belly button chakra. Its seed mantra is रं which stands for fiery flow. It is the driving force of the Lankan region, its de facto brain. The scientists also describe the belly as the second brain because most of the chemicals secreted by the brain are secreted by the guts also. According to them there is a hot line between the brain and the belly brain. That is why we have expressions like gutsy, gut feeling, gut action, gut reaction, having guts, not having guts or gutless. The manipur chakra is home to all the earthy drives in man---lust, anger, pride, attachment, greed, lithargy, jealousy, fickleness, deception, obduracy. These are the ten heads of Ravana. This rally of the belly keeps everybody tethered to the earth. This region comprises, the kitchen, the toilet, the bedroom, and the patronage of the belly brain (read body consciousness). No wonder people stay here birth after birth.
I will revisit the second chakra, for a while, to explain that svadisthan means established in the self. Remember that the 's' in self is a lowercase letter, here. People are more than willing to remain in this region, life after life. In this regard American uprightness is redoubtable. They call their toilets, restrooms. Since the Americans are the modern day trend setters, every bedroom across the globe has become an annex to a restroom. Yes, not the other way round. A day may come when bedrooms may be cannibalized by restrooms. Now the ruler of this region is called Ravana which means a yelling mouth that makes everyone cry, including itself. As an epitome of all the earthy drives mentioned before, Ravana makes people with truck loads of money, and fame vast enough to wrap the globe twice, not only cry, but commit suicide. Advise these people to come out of this hell, and see how they balk at the advice. They prefer hooking their hammocks to these chakras and laze away their time swinging to the tunes of these chakras.
Freud, the father of western psychology, refused to come out of the second chakra. Osho says: Freud is the master of the world of the toilet. He lives there; that is his temple. Though what Freud calls psychology has nothing to do with Psyche, that is, the soul-mind, his upshot that 99.99% of people are abnormal, is correct. Instead of Psyche, it is Circe who impacts our lives. Let me remind you that Circe, according to Greek mythology, was an enchantress who turned men into swines. Living in the Lankan region, all the time, one can't be otherwise. Adler went upto the third chakra and talked of ego. Ego is very deceptive. It speaks from ten mouths. All the ten drives of Ravana issue from ego, that is, body consciousness. While one is in body consciousness, no growth happens. Desire drives everyone to move only in circles. Whatsoever one may achieve, but the desire remains. Even after one has amassed a fortune, one remains what one was to start with--a bundle of unfulfilled desires, a virtual panhandler.
The fourth chakra, called the anahat being in the middle, gives an overview of both the worlds--the world of body consciousness and the world of soul consciousness. Only Jung craned his neck to have a peek into it. He found that the consciousness of the Lankan region was only the tip of an iceberg. A humongous chunk of consciousness which he termed collective unconsciousness, remained untapped. Its seed mantra is यं which stands for संयम, that is, discipline. Without disciplining the senses, it is difficult to reach here, much less stay here. Only on reaching here does one realise that there is a world beyond the concrete world of the senses--a world of love and compassion as against a world of cut throat competition, and bitterness. From here starts the realm of love, light, lilt, and laughter. It becomes refined in vishuddh, the fifth chakra and when you reach the sixth, the ajna, it becomes so intense it starts pulling you inside. Ajna is the seat of naad, the original sound of Om.
If naad comes, can noor be far behind? Yes, noor follows naad as butterflies follow caterpillars. Noor is light. And as you reach the seventh chakra, the sahasrar, the floodgates of light open. To let you have a taste of the experience, I ask Pandit Gopi Krishna, world's foremost expert on kundalini, to speak to you of his first experience after persuing meditation assiduously for 18 years. Says he: Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord... The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. It is difficult to describe the experience accurately... I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined in a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was a point, bathed in light and in a state of consciousness and happiness impossible to describe.
It is a long journey from wallowing in restrooms to bathing in the pools of light, from baking in kitchen fires to tasting celestial blissfulness. Isn't it an irony that we burst crackers that pollute the air, damage our ears, and sometimes even start fires, just to declare to ourselves that we are happy? Can the dazzle of all the artificial lights put together, bring us one move nearer to our Ayodhya where lights cascade in a never ending Dipawali? It is about this Dipawali that Kabir sings:
रस गगन गुफा में अजर झरे
बिन चंदा उजियारी बरसे, समझ परे जब ध्यान धरे
बिन बाजा झनकार उठे, जब अलख पुरुष का ध्यान करे
काम विकार निकट नहीं आवे, क्रोध लोभ मद द्वेष जरे
कहत कबीर सुनो भई साधो, अमर होइ जम सूं न डरे।
"Nectar drips from the celestial vault. Moon light cascades without the moon. Cadence arises without a musical instrument. You are lost to lust, anger, greed, and jealousy. Death nolonger, frightens you."
Kabir promises this gift to anybody who is willing to meditate. Any takers? Perhaps if I tell you the other half of the story, you may get interested. By now you have become familiar with the prominent beads in the mala--Ayodhya, Rama, Lanka, Ravana. But where is the thread that sustains these beads? Yes, the central character without whom the story collapses? You guessed it right. Where is Sita, the one irreplaceable character of the story? But more important than where is Sita? Is the query who is Sita? Well, etymologically speaking, Sita means a furrow, a narrow track made in the soil by a plough. According to the common tradition, she was found while Janak furrowed his field. A cubit long furrow in our body which translates rubbish into rubies has been known to the yogis of India by the name of sushumna, the madhya nadi, from times immemorial.
Thus it is Sita who as madhya nadi, links Ayodhya to Lanka, the highlands of sahasrar to the lowlands of mooladhar. She is the bridge between soul consciousness and body consciousness. Meher Baba was more explicit when he said that the journey from heaven to hell and vice versa, is only a cubit long. On one side of the sushumna is heaven; on the other, hell. The seven chakras are the seven stopovers en route the journey. These seven chakras are variously described as the seven lokas, the seven seas, the seven rishis, the seven ragas, the seven days, the seven rainbow colors. Sita gives life to these chakras and through them to the pindand, our body. In this role of a creatrix and sustainer, her name is akashganga. Yes, Sita means akashganga, the celestial ganga, the ganga of liquid light.
Sita is the natura naturans, the creative energy, of Rama. As akashganga, she flows down from the highlands of Ayodhya to the lowlands of Lanka to nourish us. But she gets stuck in muladhar which is dead-to-heaven and wed-to-hell. Here she is known as dakshinayini, that is, bound southward. The place overweighs her spirit. She coils down and goes to sleep as kundalini and waits for Rama to come and deliver her from the prison. With the help of a sadguru, the seeker comes to recognize Rama and thereby burns the Lanka of ego with the heat of meditation. Sita is set free and she rises up the seven chakras in the form of the liquid light as experienced by Pandit Gopi Krishna. And then the sahasrar blazons with celestial light. This is Dipawali, the festival of lights of the meditators. My Guru would often humorously exhort his disciples to meditate so they didn't have to shell out money to buy themselves a television set!
Just a couple of days before, on November 02, 2020, two distinctive headlines in a local newspaper of my city of 40 lakh head count, drew my attention. One read: राजस्थान: पटाखों पर पाबंदी। And the other said: राजधानी में दिवाली पर ₹४५ करोड़ के पटाखे बिकते हैं। But for corona, 45 crore rupees would have gone in flames, in one day, in one city! For what? For the display of fireworks! If one obtains to the inner flood of lights, one could be a witness to far greater fireworks, and that too gratis and without any pollution! Instead, imagine about the damage to the city air already burdened with noxious gases. This money can bring cheer to a thousand faces from the slums, slums that remind us constantly, whatsoever the claims made, that India is yet to arrive.
The descent and ascent of akashganga, the life sustaining energy, involves (7+7=14) steps in the form of chakras, for the rejuvenation of the body and the soul. These are known as the 14 years of exile in the traditions. We can easily reverse the whole scenario, for the benefit of everyone, to put an end to our exile. Yes, we are all in exile, without knowing about it. We have to take only 7 steps of ascent to achieve to our freedom. So when are we going to get out of our self imposed exile? This is possible only when we replace the modern accent on अर्थकरी विद्या by the time tested wisdom of सा विद्या या विमुक्तये।
Heat and cold, day and night, pain and pleasure, prosperity and penury, peace and crisis, Ayodhya and Lanka, are all examples of the double helix that is part of one framework, one cycle-- the cycle of growth, the cycle of evolution. Both the strands of each pair are like the two legs needed for our locomotion. If we get stuck in any one place, growth stops. When the liquid light of kundalini, of Sita, of cosmic energy, keeps on circulating through all the chakras, it nourishes both--Ayodhya and Lanka, soul consciousness and body consciousness. If it gets stuck in Ayodhya, in the sahasrar, the body falls after 21 days, so they say. Sri Ram Krishna Paramhans presents the only exception of surving in soul consciousness for six months. For the body to continue, body consciousness is essential. Similarly when we make the lowlands our home, our soul starves. Like when a child pining for his mother, is handed out a rattle, we buy ourselves a Bugatti, or a holiday ticket, when we feel a vacuum inside. Since we don't understand what is happening to us, we label it boredom.
It should not be dismissed as boredom, it is a matter of introspection. We refuse to see the wider cosmological perspective of Nature and instead, vote for our narrowly individualistic point of view. So we busy ourselves polarizing what had been designed as one inseparable unit of opposites. Whenever we feel boredom, alarm bells should ring in our ears to indicate that we are identifying ourselves with one half of the unit. The other half is crying for our attention, but since we don't understand or pretend not to understand, we go and sit in front of the TV or the PC, or down a spot of booze, go visit our buddies (read gossip). No one can escape the inevitability of the opposites. If we don't learn the art of what J. Krishnamurthy calls choiceless awareness, that is, remaining equidistant from both and witnessing them, we will keep hopping up and down the mental pogo stick. Our mental state is likely to become unstable and our judgements erratic. Most of the time we remain ignorant how harsh we can be to ourselves.
That which comes from the mind is written in prose. That which comes from the heart is expressed in poetry. Judgments and history are written in prose. Epics and lyrics are written in poetry. Prose is literal. Poetry is metaphorical. The story of Rama is epical like Homer's Illiad. It is a metaphor, a grand metaphor, and a very powerful one too. Our outer is only a reflection of the inner. If the inner is lackadiasical, window dressing the outer doesn't help. The inner journey brings about light (I am not using the word enlightenment), harmony and poetry in our lives. I wish all my readers a Dipawali that never stops.
Completed: 8.30 P.M; Nov. 05, 2020.
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi.
