A chilly February night on the hills of a less-visited holy shrine in Tamil Nadu.
I sit atop a boulder and gaze at the starry sky. The small towns around the
base of the hills are so noisy as opposed to the meditative silence here. Even
crickets and other nightly insects seem to maintain silence at this place. This
place had been one of the most-revered places of the ancient saints, and
claimed to be abode of God himself. After starting to climb up the hill early
this morning, right from the moment I reached the peak, I feel as if all the
connections with my regular worldly life have got severed. My mind sees a
never-experienced tranquility and stillness. As I continue to gaze at the sky, I have a feeling as if I’m being pulled by every star, as if using several strings, away from the world and into an unknown realm closer to God.
As moments pass, I feel that the silence has changed into a mild, rhythmic and collective chant of the name of God. As I stay focused in my seeming journey to that realm, my human intellect pulls out a question from the world beneath the hills and shoves into my mind- “WHO IS GOD?” It repeats the question harmoniously over and over again- “WHO IS GOD?” “WHO IS GOD?” As the stars abruptly stop pulling me to that realm, I start looking for an answer to this question. And I see several well-known figures from my under-the-hill-life popping up and filling my mind’s vastness. They are Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, Siththar Thirumoolar, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, psychologist Dr.Joseph Murphy and Indian movie star Kamal Haasan. As I bewilderedly ask them why they are all here, they all tell me in harmony- “I HAVE THE ANSWER!”
As moments pass, I feel that the silence has changed into a mild, rhythmic and collective chant of the name of God. As I stay focused in my seeming journey to that realm, my human intellect pulls out a question from the world beneath the hills and shoves into my mind- “WHO IS GOD?” It repeats the question harmoniously over and over again- “WHO IS GOD?” “WHO IS GOD?” As the stars abruptly stop pulling me to that realm, I start looking for an answer to this question. And I see several well-known figures from my under-the-hill-life popping up and filling my mind’s vastness. They are Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, Siththar Thirumoolar, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, psychologist Dr.Joseph Murphy and Indian movie star Kamal Haasan. As I bewilderedly ask them why they are all here, they all tell me in harmony- “I HAVE THE ANSWER!”
The
first one to speak up is Bodhidharma, the Kanchipuram-born founder of Shaolin
Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism. With a stern look on his face, he says, “As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you will never see that your own mind is the Buddha!” Sensing the puzzled look on my face, he continues, “To find a
Buddha, all you have to do is see your nature”. As I was trying to decrypt what
he said, I heard someone singing a poem. It was the mystical Tamil Siththar
saint Thirumoolar.
Siththars were the mystical Tamil saints, astrologers, alchemists and scientists of
ancient India. Thirumoolar being one of the most mystic of them begins to sing an odd poem that goes like this (translated version):
This
poem of Thirumoolar sounded like a simple kindergarten school rhyme, but only
after moments did I realize that it’s just the superficial meaning. The hidden meaning is that the five senses of a person are like the
five cows he keeps at his house. When he succumbs to these senses, these
uncontrolled senses make him go crazy in life, but when controlled, they reap
him the ultimate benefits of human life. Thirumoolar adds, "Controlling the senses is the
key to evidence the Master". I suddenly hear someone laughing. It was Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.
As psychologist Dr. Joseph Murphy starts to speak, I yearned for a straight forward answer at least this time. He pulls out from one of his books and quotes from the Holy Bible,
When I was about to quickly judge him and anticipate his answer, he smiles as if he knew what I thought, and repeats, “If you ask in faith, you will receive. But who do you ask?
-The treasure house!” To me, his response was utterly confusing. I should ask the “treasure house”?!?! He smiles again and continues, “if you ask in firm belief, your prayers will get answered. For all your sincere prayers are listened by, and answered by the treasure house within you - which created you, healed you and continues to shape you every second - the “treasure house” within you – your subconscious mind.
It is versatile Indian actor Kamal Haasan who begins to speak now. As I look at him, all that comes to my mind is his well-known atheist ideologies and rationalism. He says in a matter-of-fact manner, “God is omnipresent!” It blew me off for one second. Kamal says, God is everywhere?! He continues, “God lives in you and lives in me, for God is none other than you and me”. This leaves me even more perplexed.
All
these people I’m evidencing in front of my eyes are from different lifetimes and varied backgrounds.
Some are dead and some are alive. Some are saints, psychologists and
some are show-biz personalities. Together, they bewilder me even more about my
original question of “Who is God?” I feel lost in a world of mystics. As I stare
at them as I think, all of them disappear with a momentary flash in the dark
sky of the night. The silvery stars collectively begin to pull me again. As I
move, I start to see a huge blazing light in the distant horizon of my mind, and I knew - I was not very far from the realm of God…
To be continued in the next post..
To be continued in the next post..
