by Santosh Jha
CHAPTER 9
Shiv hates to do it. Especially with Melissa, who trusts him like an innocent child. In ancient Indian philosophic and religious traditions, the worst crime one could commit was breach of trust. Even modern law considers it as grave offence. Shiv knows, he has no way out, even if he wished to tell the truth to her. He had to do it the way his chief conspirator wanted. He was just carrying the orders.
He has the latest instruction to wrap it up fast as he had to report to his original duties shortly. He has to speed it up and do it in a way Melissa could not sense. He decides to do it tonight. She has already informed Melissa that they would talk something serious tonight.
As the dark descends on the village, Shiv enters Melissa’s room. This is the time when usually, Melissa behaves like a kid and Shiv pampers her. Shiv however has a different plan.
“Melissa, I have things to say to you but if you are tired or otherwise not in good mood to listen to me, we can postpone it.”
“No Shiv, I am perfectly all right. I can never be as tired not to listen to you. Tell me what you want to say.”
“You have to be very attentive as what we shall discuss tonight is serious and shall need your perfect focus and attention.”
“Okay, anyway, in the dim light, I can only see you, nothing else.”
“Melissa, first thing I have to tell you is a big sorry and I also request you not to ask why.”
“But I shall ask why! How can I accept a sorry, if I do not know the reason?”
“Consider it a charity, you extend to a poor yogi and charity is done without asking anything.”
“No! Shiv, forget it, I am not charitable. You are not only my dear friend but also my teacher. How can a student accept a sorry from her teacher?”
“Melissa, above everything, you are an empress and it is fit for an empress to forgive.”
“Then I demand the reason. If I am an empress, then nobody says no to me!”
Melissa loves to tease Shiv and show him her childlike pranks. She loves being pampered by Shiv. She keeps arguing with him and finally makes him withdraw his sorry.
“Shiv, you are such a bad person. I have no words to thank you for what you have done to me. I cannot tell you, how happily endowed I feel with you and with what you extended to me in such short time. I cannot even think of you being wrong at the first place. An apology is something I can never except from you. I have always received treasures from you. Are you feeling sorry to take me to this heavenly place and making me learn so much? Tell me!”
“Madam Genius, I withdraw my apology for now but, I request you to keep alive this sorry for a future date when you would probably agree to accept it.”
“Shiv, please, if you talk like that, I shall feel that you are no more my friend. Is this the serious thing you wished to talk? I am not talking to you!”
“Okay, sorry for saying this sorry. Even if you do not talk to me, I shall remain your friend, forever. Anyway, tonight, you do not need to talk, you just need to listen.”
“I shall accept the sorry for your sorry only when you compensate for the wrong. You have to do it by promising that even if I do limitless and craziest of stupidities, you shall always be my dear friend and never leave me.”
Shiv looks at her. He leaves his chair and sits by her side on her bed. She turns and faces him. He takes her right hand in his left hand and taps gently with his right hand. She looks in his eyes. There is enough light in the room for her to see his eyes getting moist. A woman is designed to read a man’s heart through his eyes. She reads the oceans of compassion in his eyes. The child in her gives way to the woman in her. She could not see the guilt in his eyes but her heart soaks with gratitude from the drops of water, which lines his eyes.
“Shiv, I am sorry. I am truly very sorry. I accept whatever you say. I am such a stupid girl. God knows why I start behaving like a little girl, when I am with you. Believe me, I trust you more than anything. I accept your sorry, I do. I know if you say it, there must be a good reason for it.”
“Melissa, I am so fortunate that you have always been in brilliant reception with me. But, tonight, I have to say things, which you need to consciously assimilate. There shall be times when you would like to ask questions; you may find something I say as untenable to you. You have to allow them all to slip in. It is not that I am saying or giving this to you. In fact, whatever you say you have attained here, are your own reception, not my communication. The realism is just the reverse of it. You are in automatic reception of them because you have attained a consciousness positioning, where things similar and naturally symmetrical are automatically drawn to you. It is one realism, you shall learn to master in days ahead. Tonight, in the darkness, there are realisms, elemental situationalisms lined up in queue. You need to open all your doors for them, consciously checking any urge to block them. Later, when you assess their utility for your final acceptance, you can use your discretion for rejecting any of them.”
“Shiv, I promise you, I shall assimilate anything you say. But you also have to promise that later, when it shall be time for my discretion to assess their utility, you shall be there with me as my teacher and good friend.”
“Even this is your discretion and reception. This place, the life here, the people, even me, you have liked and enjoyed because you found utility in them. This is what we shall talk tonight. I am very confident that you are in a consciousness of ultimate reception for it. You are very intelligent and truly knowledgeable in your own right but true learning does not need them. What it needs is what you have loads of them and that is why I call you an empress. You have the innocence and honesty to be most eligible for all learning of life and all realisms around you. The environment here and days you spent here are just the right catalyst for it.”
Melissa anticipates that Shiv has something for her, which he wants her to imbibe and assimilate in her best of innocence. A woman reciprocates best to innocence and compassion. She feels his compassion muffled around her innocence and she does not wish any space between the two. She inches closer to Shiv and feels his breathe. Shiv bows his head in complete deference of the most precious thing coming his way – the innocent trust of the empress.
The soil is ready and in absolute anticipation of the seed and this extends the energy for the seed to ascend to its best potential. This is springtime for the nature. All elements are in perfect attendance of the primordial union of soil and seed. The seed shall dissolve its utility and fruition into the soil and the soil shall attain its finality. The cosmic conspiracy shall once again win; it has always!
“Melissa, we are dealing with something, which has its origin around 3000 years back. For others, it shall be almost impossible to visualize a time that far in history. You can however understand it and feel it in your consciousness. It is close to where we are now. It is about people, who lived in similar world 3000 years back. The nature then was even wilder and far more intense then and they had far more leisure time than we have here. There were very few people around and naturally, the level of proximity and intimacy between them was far deeper than today. As you understand it best, in such world and life, it becomes so much easy and available to observe even the most intangible of feelings, emotions, ideas, patterns and structures. I consciously made you to live the isolation, leisure and detachment here so that you could register it in your deep consciousness. You can now easily visualize a life in history that far. Our ancestors had little distractions of modern and contemporary life. As population pressure on natural resources was very little and needs of life were few, they had loads of quality leisure time. The poise they had within and utility they accepted of this precious leisure, led them to be keen observers of every little thing around. They could decipher a design, a pattern in almost everything that happened or presented themselves to them. Humans have the most developed facility of observance and imagination. These two innate facilities made our ancestors decipher so many patterns in the nature and in their lives. They started to put them
into actionable ideas. It is also very natural and we all even today do the same. Those were days, when our ancestors only had the human tools of observations and imaginations as means of corroboration. However, they had the genius to engender such ideas, which were self-evident and self-corroborative in their immediate milieus. They beautifully picked up symbols and metaphors from nature to elaborate and substantiate their ideas. They are part of philosophic and spiritual traditions but actually, they also happen to be the crude resource for scientific enquiry and substantiation. The core philosophy is based not on ideas, which modern contemporary world can label as pure imagination of idle and primitive minds. They can be accepted as observations of realisms, present in the cosmic mechanism and in the microcosm of human lives and their social living by people, who had the most receptive mind consciousness. That is why the core philosophy seems so self-evident and self-corroborative. The core idea emanates out of a realism, which is finality even today and shall always remain the ultimate finality. This finality is mortality.”
“Shiv, why should you talk about death in such a beautiful night!”
“We are not talking death; we are into life and its meaning. Trust me. Once we reach the end of it, you shall find that it is the most beautiful thing to talk about.”
Melissa trusts him. She knows, when he initiated her into new experiences, she was reluctant and unsettled. Now she cherishes them. She understands, probably this is going to be the most difficult experience of her life and that is why, Shiv is keeping her hands grasped between his hands. He wants her to travel the road. If he is there, she fears nothing.
“Melissa, take only small steps with me towards the destination. Join me in my consciousness. We need to put aside our consciousness, which is so used to popular modern ideas and benchmarks. It is a popular way of thinking that death is the end. We shall accept it as the beginning of life. We are just accepting the basic premise as one final truth and that is why, the inevitable has to be accepted as the beginning of all ideas of life. When the assumption is right, the idea has better chances of being right. The core Indian philosophy starts with finality as the initiation of all ideas of life. That is why it is self-evident and self-corroborative. Our worthy ancestors could decipher that even in the definitive and inevitable pattern of mortality; there was overall continuity and immortality, which permeated in the milieus around them. They could decipher that in nature, there were elements, which remained continuous and immortal in totality, even while part of it decayed in cyclic mechanism. This masterly observation was made available to the genius of imagination and it could be unraveled to them that every life on earth too had core elements, which were continuous and immortal, even when part of it decayed in time. This core observation engendered the idea of two distinct but simultaneous elements of the cosmic realism – the mortal and discontinuous and; the immortal and continuous. They also discovered that within human life too, the same twin elements existed. The body was mortal and aligned to discontinuous cosmic elements but the elemental consciousness deep within was immortal and aligned with continuous elements. The subjective feeling of me, the self as distinct and different from other human being was just a virtual bridge between the twin realisms of mortality and immortality. This core idea became the cornerstone of a philosophy, which is enshrined in the cardinal Indian spiritual system. The yoga philosophy also adheres to this core idea. Yoga in ancient Indian language of Sanskrit means union of the immortal elements within a human being with the cosmic elements of immortality. Yoga is a process of attaining the union of jeevatma (the soul of living beings) with parmatma (the ultimate soul). This core idea also led to a belief-system, which decided the ultimate utility and purpose of all lives. Yogic philosophy presents a self-evident and self-corroborative idea of why and what is the true way of living one’s life.”
Shiv pauses to gauge whether Melissa has any questions. She has none. She is not into this mode. She keeps looking in his eyes and occasionally watches his lips. She knows, whenever Shiv makes her learn something good, it is always meant for her wellness and excellence. The only thing, which comes in her mind, is the abruptness with which Shiv brought up this talk. She postpones the question. Shiv continues.
“The core idea was tested empirically in the social milieu. The best laboratory to test and validate any idea empirically is the human body-mind mechanism itself. The patterns of human action and behavior corroborated the idea and they finally became a social practice and part of the larger culture of that time. The culture this core idea evolved, accepted that in life, everyone is naturally inclined to maximize joys and minimize pains. It was accepted that self-welfare is the cardinal goal of life for every living being and this is attainable through self-interface or self-dialogue (aatma-sakchhatkar). The wise of our civilization empirically observed that living beings are in constant and causative relationship with elements of nature. This nature also exists in microcosmic form within living beings. In nature, there are both mortal and immortal elements. They observed that mortal elements are usually expressed in tangible matter and immortal ones in intangible form. They deciphered that human being could attain their lasting and continuous wellness only when they establish a relationship with immortal and intangible elements of nature and life. The philosophy they engendered says – true and lasting relationship can happen only between similar and generic elements. This is the idea, yogic philosophy practices in totality and perfection. Yogic philosophy maintains that even the matter shall finally lead to a-matter, tangible shall lead to intangible and mortal elements shall lead to immortal elements. This is because, empirically, true and lasting relationship can happen only between similar and generic elements. The five senses of body mechanism shall initially orient a person to consumption and gratification. However, the same five senses automatically and finally leads to the realization that these consumptions and gratifications are ephemeral and mortal. This is self-evident and self-corroborative as every human knows that mortality is inevitable and the ultimate realism. Yogic philosophy admits it as self-evident for all that all pleasures of body and all joys of gratifications have the inbuilt and inherent energy advocating against it. The energies of attachments and gratifications are entwined with the inverse energies of detachment and renunciation. That is why, within a human being, the desire and will to have a life of absolute detachment and renunciation is as powerful as the desire and will for a life of attachment and gratification. The philosophy, which enshrines the ideals of purpose of life as attainment of perpetuity of wellness, therefore extends this empirically self-evident and self-corroborative fact. It says that every human being should consciously opt for a relationship with only the intangibly expressed continuous and immortal elements of nature, both within the nature of the body-mind consciousness as well as the nature outside in physically and tangibly expressed domain. It says that anyone can decipher the practical realism that the flow of energy of gratification is also joyous but it ends up in the finality of pain and emptiness. Whereas, the energy flow of detached consciousness keeps augmenting like a flame in the fireplace, which is self-energized by constant offering of renounced elements of consciousness.”
“Shiv, usually philosophy is something most of us believe as some utopian ideas not amenable to test of practicality. However, what you say seems so plausible and reasonably evident. However, what comes to my mind is, if this realism about human nature and life realism is so self-evident and self-corroborative, why then the whole world is doing just the reverse of it. Everyone is onto gratifications and consumptions and still they say the world is becoming a far better place to live as more and more people are having greater personal resources and purchasing power. And as you said, this gratification joy is as potent an energy as the renunciation is.”
“This is something, which you can say is a natural question. It seems very natural that if there is a goodness and larger wellness idealism for humanity, it must be followed by all. But, as you said, most of the people do just the
opposite of the idealism. Then surely, it seems like the right conclusion that as majority of people do not accept it and follow it, it can never be an idealism and never a self-corroborative idea. We shall deal with the question in a very pragmatic way; not as philosophy but as prevalent realism. As I told you earlier, we shall take it step by step. The first step is the very pragmatic and self-evident realism that the powerful energy of joy in consumption and gratification is entwined with its end in pain and discontinuity. There is this famous metaphor of equating it with the joy of itching. It starts with so much pleasure when we scratch an itch. If we continue with it, it finally ends up in sharp pain and even bleeding in very short time. The idea is that the very core and perennial realization of painful mortality and regret of any gratification joy, even while we are at the peak of its enjoyment is there from the very start. The fruit of gratification has seeds of pain and regret of its inevitable discontinuity loaded within it. Yogic philosophy lists three broad types of grief and pain for humans. As it is the essential nature of a tangible gratification element, the person who starts enjoying it has this grief and pain well on in his or her mind that this joy shall finally land him or her in trouble. It is in fact instantaneous. People globally know that more people are dying because of overeating and overindulgence. The moment you overeat, you start feeling uneasy. As is human instinct, there is also a sense of guilt after the action, which we happily ignore but it is stored in the subconscious. This is first type of grief. The second grief emanates out of the mortality and discontinuity of the very element of tangible gratification. If I have million dollars, I am always stressed and in perpetual consternation that this money I may lose in business or in other way. Worse, the moneys may be robbed or authorities may take it away as tax. Worst enough; I am also unhappy that my neighbor probably has more wealth and better prospect of being wealthier than me. The third grief is that when I have once got the taste of a particular gratification, it is stored in my memory and subconscious mind. When finally the gratification is no more available to me, its memory becomes an excruciating source of grief and pain.”
“Shiv, I truly understand and accept this thus far. I have personally gone through all this and that is why, it is more than self-evident to me. I presume, every one of us have our own set of practical experiences in life, which can truly corroborate the realism, which you mentioned. I think, the next step to this progression is why and how still, majority of people continue to be in this gratification and consumption worldview, even when the ultimate futility of it is so empirically self-evident and self-corroborative.”
“Melissa, this part of the question has answers, which are still evolving. Science has been into understanding the consciousness of living being and especially humans. Psychology as well as yogic philosophy has answers but they cannot be accepted as finality because, mechanism of mind consciousness in its entirety has not yet been fully understood and proven. However, we have reasonably plausible answers in parts. They at least explain to good extent what you asked about. They are part answers but together, they make up for a sustainable answer. We all need to accept answers about decision-making and choices of human consciousness in a very open and relative way. The first fact remains that all gratification actually begins with an instant and intense joy. The itch, when we start scratching, extends intense and instant joy. At the point of start, the joy part is tangible and overridingly present. The impending pain is intangible and latent, as the joy rules the senses. It is first nature of every living being is to accept and invite joy. There are so many good and joyous things in this world, which start with pain, and in them, the joy part is latent, which ultimately prevails in long run. However, people usually never accept their utility. Part of scientific community believes that it is the way our brain is designed and has evolved to work. Brain is, unlike other human organs, not a single organ but a cooperative of layers of it. Its working is very complex and probably has a randomized decision-making matrix. They however maintain that it is primarily reactive and does not register the time-space dimensions. This makes our subconscious usually decide for us and as it is good at reacting to five senses and assigns only instant utility as basis for value-summation, most of us have an innate consciousness to accept the first and immediate utility of an action or behavior, without assigning weight and utility to long-term consequences. This is something, which comes to us through conscious and continuous mind training. The conscious mind needs to be trained to come out of the instant action-reaction mode and short-term utility of it. Both science as well as philosophy believes that humans have the decisive advantage of having the faculty and facility of observance and imagination, to postpone an action-reaction decision-making of subconscious mind. Humans have evolved to this stage of modern wisdom only because of this facility.”
“Shiv, it seems so contradicting and conflicting. On the one hand, you say, we came this far in our march to civilization because we have the intelligence to imagine beyond the instant gratification and reactive instincts. Still, majority of us are so ignorant that we cannot see the latent trouble in most of our culturally labeled utilities and joys. I have heard how most living beings risk their dear lives and are even predated, just for the instinctive urge of mating. For mating, they do such activities, which make them vulnerable against predators. One can understand that they do it because they do not have the faculty of imagination to postpone or purge their instinctive action-reaction body urges. But even humans do it, most of them. They risk their lives for instant self-gratification. Why this contradiction Shiv?”
“There are so many answers Melissa, but unfortunately no single final answer as we still do not completely know how and why the mind consciousness of humans work the way they do. As I said, there are part answers still we can have a framework of explaining this contradictory behavior. The top scientists of today say a very interesting thing. They say, when races become too intelligent, they become extinct. This somehow explains the latent energy behind evolution of human consciousness. It is not that science is warning against human intelligence, their ingenuity and inventiveness now. More than 3000 years back, philosophy of human minds warned against this. The fact remains that for most people, it is first intelligence to react to their five senses as they give them the very intense and primary joys of consumptive satisfaction. This first intelligence has, over the years become adept, procrastinating the latent intelligence, which warns against it and reveals the painful side of it. Then, there are other socio-psychological reasons. We live in such a huge and diverse society that most of us are almost detached with others. In this village society, there are only 75 people and even in a short time of a week, you have almost known all of them and they come across you every day. In such small societies, it is very evident and visible to all, how wrong ultimately falls back on the wrongdoer, even when in short-run, it may seem to bring joys. Therefore, people can see and the truth is self-evident. However, in our huge and modern contemporary society, we never know what happens even to our immediate neighbor. At best, we can know about neighbor’s joys but never their pains. Our intelligence of maximizing joys and minimizing pains has made us confined to individual joys and pains. This somehow blinds us of what ills and troubles this modern culture of over instant-self-gratification is engendering. People all over the world know about your success, name and fame. They knew what you attained and how you were felicitated for your attainments. However, nobody wants to know what pains and troubles you went through because of the same attainments. There is this intelligence of average people, which urges them to label a subjective blame to other’s pains. They would always say, he died of liver disease because he boozed too much. I take just a few drinks and I am very careful about my diet. There is a tendency to make others failure subjective so that we could dissociate ourselves with it. However, the same intelligence wishes to make all successes as objective so that it could be associated with all. So, it is their intelligence, not ignorance, which makes Melissa’s succe
ss as something anybody could have but her failure as something she created for herself. There are so many independent explanations of how we all behave and how things are what they are now. All answers however emanate out of the mechanism of human consciousness, which we are still not able to understand perfectly. This in turn allows the free flight of fanciful advocacy for our subjective intelligence and inventiveness.”
“Shiv, now I understand why you always insist on me putting my innocence and honesty to the front of my consciousness. I understand why the tree of human intelligence should always be solidly rooted in the soil of innocent honesty. You know Shiv, I always was an innocent empress my dad made me to be. However, as I grew in the milieu, where everyone was in a race for intelligence, I thought, it is ideal for an empress to be way ahead of the people in intelligence. I strived for it and made my mark. I think, somewhere, I lost my royal innocence and crown of stupid honesty. That is why I faced the troubles like a silly girl.”
“Melissa, you did not lose your innocence. It was just pushed to disuse. Your father wished you to be like an empress to keep away and aloof from the populism of generic intelligence, which has come to stay as the cornerstone of all popular societal benchmarks of modern society. For a while, you dabbled into this populism and that too with great success. You still are the innocent empress, your father nurtured with so much care and affection. If not, you would not have been here and journeying the road to a destination, you have almost arrived at.”
“No Shiv, I feel, I have taken a small first step on the road. But I wish to travel the whole distance and I know, you shall take me to the destination. Shiv, I am so happy and can I be a bit proud that very initially, I asked you the right questions and it is all the more valid now. You remember, I had asked you in the Rishikesh ashram to tell me, how to be in a super consciousness, which enables the self to decide the matrix of all decision-making of action-behavior, independent of the innate instincts and subconscious mind. How you attained this facility of being the conscious decider of what should ideally present yourself with your decision-matrix at any point of time in your life. You see Shiv, I am so good at keeping the questions alive, which you asked me to do.”
“Melissa, you are not just good, you are brilliant, a true genius. Always remain with your genius of innocent honesty and simplicity. An empress is special because of that. You are very special.”
“Thank you so much. Now you answer my question.”
“Not now dear empress. It is already too late. We shall talk about this tomorrow morning when we shall go to jungle and sit near the waterfall. That shall be the ideal backdrop as the answer involves discussion about nature.”
Shiv goes out to arrange for dinner. She feels his warmth in her hand. All of a sudden, she looks for a mirror in the room. She wants to see herself. She smiles at the thought that ever since she came here, she never looked at a mirror. There was none anyway. Melissa remembers, she was so conscious of her looks and image. She thinks, she did not actually look at herself in the mirror but at someone, who was a movie star and she checked it quite often to ensure that she looked like the way people had her image of. Now that she believes, she is one, deep inside her consciousness, who roams around in the wild nature unconcerned and free. She is one who enjoys her simple and honest talks with Shiv. She is one who now trusts, her consciousness is what makes her beautiful as Shiv always says, she beautiful because she is innocent and simple. She wonders, whether Shiv finds her beautiful in other ways too. She is not concerned, just curious. She knows deep inside, Shiv sees her as an empress and all empresses are beautiful. She has no doubts over Shiv’s words that she is brilliant. She does not wish to ask him anymore. She is confident, Shiv is caring her so much and pampering her in unimaginable ways not because her dad probably helped the ashram or Acharya in a big way. He is doing it because he likes her and appreciates her innocence, honesty and simplicity. She believes, these are the diamonds Shiv said she had in her and she just needed to dig them out. She decides to wear her diamonds always as Shiv liked them and liked her for that.
**