Maya

Whither your artifice tonight, O temptress!
In the deepest hour of night I have risen
To find you sprawled in torpid slumber
Hogging the sheets, as always

Voluptuous you are, for that is your Form
Skilled are your limbs in all arts of Love
Numberless evenings of sorrow turn to nights of delight
As deeply I have felt you, caressing your name

Came I to your boudoir when scarce a youth
Bare chance had I of eluding your lure
Not much I knew of the ways of the world
Knowing you, I sought to grow in wisdom

Grown have I in virility and power and strength
Our nights should have been lurid beyond reason
Yet I wake upon a stone floor at midnight and write
While you nestle in the cushions of your plush divan

No more do I love you, well you know this
But not through egregious folly on your part
Beyond you there is no pleasure, well I know this
Since you alone hold the keys to the doors of my heart

But we've been through this before
I fleeing, you pursuing, ever complacent
For wherever I flee, I end up seeking you out
In different clothes perhaps, a shade younger no doubt

And in the passage of time, in the dark watches of night
All my new lovers metamorphose as I sleep
Back into you, as rivers into the ocean
For you are all I have loved, and will ever love

Jealous you have been of our pleasant young son
Moksha his name, curly rings in his hair
Ever does he smile, and is gracious with all
Long hours I spend meditating on his thought

Fear not, my queen, not your rival is he
Though my waking hours seem at times
To be but endless soliloquies in his praise
I seek not to know him as I have known you

It is not in my nature to bear him that love
Or seek to find pleasure in knowing him well
Calm are his thoughts; with simple truth they are blessed
Happily in his company much time do I spend

Yet he is a mere stripling, innocent and naive
And often I must walk roads, with or without you
That he is too young and blissful to see
Or understand if he saw them, as sometimes he does

I know there is pleasure yet that waits at my call
Nudging you awake for drowsy love best of all
As arbiter of passions, you have no rivals to fear
It is simply that beyond passion some silence I crave

I am a creature of the forest, the scents and the trees
I rise to see the sun, and hear the birds and the breeze
Long have your charms convinced me to be where you are
Amidst curtains of gold and petticoats of plenitude

But ever my thought strains to break loose
And travel along strange roads to the stars
To grow out of old familiar forms and shapes
And to span the universe from end to end

No longer will I flee, as one who feels pain
Yet leave I must, lest my spirit slowly wane
This house of my body holds all that I held dear
And must cherish a while longer, while I prepare

The purpose flight serves is to stumble and fall
Draw up new steps and draw in ragged breath
Take up tenancy in halls new and bright
Find you sleeping beside me as I wake up one night

So now, I bide my time as I work on my plan
To nourish mind and body, with the ego withdrawn
I will not take my leave, till you bid me depart
When you see that our roads lie irretrievably apart

A wooden staff I am shaping to walk with me then
A begging bowl for provender the Spirit may cast
I dream every night of the road under stars
A small, upright figure upon it, blissful at last.

Love, romance and the sadhaka

I am sad today. Not sad in a bad way, mind you. Sad in a way, though, as I have not been in quite some time. My meditative practice is acquiring a desirable regularity to accompany the vigor that characterizes most things I do. My worldly affairs, insofar as they concern only me, are following a trajectory that should see most of my ambitions resolved and my questions unasked in a few more years. And now I find that the orientation of my spiritual axis mundi is not quite as perfect as I have been hoping it would be.

As children, before the discriminatory intellect becomes operational, we all acquire various desires through our dealings with physical and mental reality on a cost-benefit basis. These may be understood as individual voices in the symphony of one's existence. The purpose of the aspirant to self-realization is to gradually bring these voices to resolution in the appropriate tonic key. Thus, for example, there exists the voice of intellectual ambition which demands a certain level of dexterity in manipulating abstractions before it may be satiated. Similarly, there is the voice of social assimilation, which seeks a degree of parochial acclaim in various social contexts before it may be rendered quiescent. There are voices of envy, voices of hate, voices that plead and voices that resonate.

The greatest wisdom lies in not creating too many of these voices, so that shutting down the ones that exist may be accomplished facilely and at an early date, while the body and the mind of the sadhaka retain sufficient youth to be able to acquire the intense discipline and austerity that is required to walk the path of fire and light. However, once these voices have been created, attempting to ignore them, suppress them, or stamp them out inelegantly (resolving to the tonic too soon, for instance) will lead to instability of purpose which will manifest itself outwardly as hypocrisy and inconsistency. I think there is some reason to believe that intercession by the gurutattva might help matters somewhat, but I am not convinced that this is indeed the case.

Where this matter acquires a personal flavor for me is in the realization, which came to me yesterday, that one of the strongest voices in my own symphony of existence is the one that seeks to love a quiet, thoughtful and whimsical woman and have that love returned. It is moderately interesting to trace the source of this circumstance: a significantly passionate nature , exposure to all kinds of romantic literature as a child, growing up in a middle-class ethos far removed from any pretensions to detachment and spirituality, and strongly mutually affectionate parents.

However, this is not a happy situation for the humble sadhaka. As long as the music concerns oneself entirely, there is some measure of temporal control that the sadhaka believes he possesses in the evolution of his spiritual trajectory. But when a voice that forms part of the music, and a very strong and important one at that, requires the participation of another person, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle arises. It is hard enough to deal with the desires and motivations of one person and sublimate them. Add another cook to the mix, and the resulting broth does not seem to stand much of a chance of gastronomical success.

This obstacle is rendered even more intractable by various existing social mores that hold the relationship between a man and a woman - `love' for short - to be a desirable end in itself, and worthy of aspiration and preservation in perpetuity. It is difficult for me to empathize with this view. It is a set of subconscious urges that create the desire for love, not any intrinsic characteristics of the reality that is Brahman. It is disconcerting and somewhat nihilistic to espouse this view, since it just so happens that the very act of creation in humans correlates strongly with a manifestation of love, and the act of bearing children is premised entirely on the belief that the love is meaningful and will last as long as the bodies do. Nevertheless, realizing and understanding the epi-phenomenal nature of human aspirations motivated by love is a necessary component of a sadhaka's evolution.

Unless strong and sustained efforts at detachment are made in the aspirant's early childhood (which might be the case if the parents are puritanical, self-disciplined or religious in nature), these latent desires will exist and voice their dissatisfaction at the aspirant's continual efforts to disenfranchise them in the course of his mental and physical activity.

I have been feeling a mild sense of jubilation in the recent past through believing that I have finally acquired an appropriate level of control over my libido and have established myself in the practice of brahmacharya, which is so universally lauded as the foundation of spiritual attainment. And yet, it took little more than an unexpected dinner date, free-flowing intelligent conversation, the sight of ringlets of brown hair glistening in the sun, and some subsequent introspection for me to realize how deeply the song of love is embedded in my psyche, and how plaintive and yearning the current mood of its melody really is, notwithstanding my rather successful efforts to ignore it.

The yearning, I fear, is a consequence of the fact that I had the opportunity, some time ago, to resolve this melody, foolishly lost perspective and tried to perpetuate it meaninglessly, and ended up in a state of spiritual apathy and emotional agony as a result. Having replenished my spiritual reserves over the past year or so, I had consciously lost sight of this aspect of my personality, but am now confronted with this past spiritual failure of mine at a time when I feel that I am making substantial progress.

There can be no success in brahmacharya, while the desire for love remains unfulfilled. The physical desire may be controlled, perhaps even controlled in perpetuity, but it will not be extinguished save by great labor by persistently starving the subconscious mind by, in turn, shielding the conscious mind from stimuli that might set off thoughts of love. My sadness is in part a consequence of my realization of the long road that lies ahead, before the subconscious is completely purged, and the throbbing of Turiya is the only music that remains.

I shudder at the thought that the road to Silence of this identity might yet intersect with the karmic trajectory of another. I feel somewhat irritated, `Why must the road be so tortuous and loopy?' and I wonder at the strength of my commitment to the spiritual path, when such a strong desire for womanly affection burns untrammeled in the subconscious. Worse yet, I find that I am not categorically opposed to it. At this stage, I feel I have developed sufficient willpower to turn my mind away and retrieve my equanimity. That is indeed what I am doing in practice. Yet I see clearly that my repudiation of the desire for love is not as complete or honest as my repudiation of most other matters of worldly significance.

However, I take some consolation in the knowledge that the snake that is clearly perceived is a snake that may be safely dealt with, and I hope and pray that my desire for perceiving undifferentiated consciousness is as pure, intense and unalloyed as it appears to be when I don't have two bright gray eyes smiling at me across a table.

Kundalini Rising

Body heat and sweat right after 25 km run, none
Resemblance of mental state with that right after waking, substantial.
Difference between physical world and dream world, negligible.

Perceptive ability for flowers and wind, intense
Perceptive ability for everything else, ambiguous
Thought, emotion and endorphins, absent

Tingling sensation in middle of back
Ringing noises in crown of head.
Sole burning desire, silence.

The necessity of solitude in meditation

During the course of this summer, CWI having graciously provided me with spacious and commodious accommodation, I have been conducting an experiment of sorts on the effect of socializing on meditative practice. The problem is as follows: since the final state of meditative repose lies in a realization of the illusionary nature of physical and conceptual partitioning, and whereas progress in meditative awareness is measured quite accurately by the relative subjugation of the identifying principle - the Ego, there seems to be a logical inconsistency in requiring the aspirant to isolate his body and related appurtenances from the rest of perceived reality. The definition of solitude, in essence, seems rather arbitrary and ad hoc. Fundamentally, this problem arises as a consequence of a deeper question: what is the relationship between the Whole and the Individual. What is so special about the Individual? What properties of the Whole cause the Individual to exist in the Singular, not in the Dual, nor even in the Plural?

Philosophical answers to several of these statements appear to leap immediately to mind. However, today, I wish to collate the empirical evidence that my experiment has accumulated. We may be able to discuss their implications in the context of the metaphysical a priori answers that tradition and logic tend to present. A brief word regarding the methodology: being in possession of an apartment with a double bed and a spacious living room, I have, for the past month and a half, offered my living space freely to any and all travelers visiting Amsterdam and desiring to spend their hours of rest and leisure in less alien surroundings than the insides of hotels. My efforts are aided and abetted by a splendid social networking site called Couchsurfing which I joined a couple of years ago. Thus, it has so transpired that my little apartment has taken on the shape and form of a caravanserai of sorts, with lots of young artists, nomads and other self-actualizing individuals passing through the doorway in either direction each and every day. I don't think I've had the apartment to myself on more than five days, of all the time I have spent here.

My experiment has consisted of seeing how much or how little my practice and daily routine have to diverge in order to accommodate other people's wishes, people of various proclivities and temperaments, people of several desires and motivations. The results are quite striking, and quite distinctive. Setting the statistical question of sample size aside (though N ~ 40), I think it is fair to say that most people who reported positive experiences and enjoyed their stay were single young males, while most people who reported negative experiences were attached young males and/or their girlfriends. Single women appeared to not enjoy their time too much, but the sample size for this demographic group is not sufficiently large to draw statistically significant conclusions.

From a qualitative point of view, visitors who enjoyed their time here found the conversations interesting, the sense of calm around the place invigorating and refreshing, and the logistical freedom afforded by an unlatched door and open refrigerator extremely useful. Visitors who did not enjoy their stay found me rude and callous in conversation, the atmosphere in the flat boring and the open door policy annoying and creepy.

From my own perspective, it was refreshing for me to find that my practice proceeded quite smoothly independent of the identity of my guests and their sentiments towards their hosts. A couple of minor points that were of interest follow.

1. Regarding the question of fidelity of practice, it was found that prolonged conversation acts as a debilitating influence on pranayama. The breath seems much weaker and less inclined to fill the chest cavity as completely the morning after a long evening of philosophical discussion.
2. The Ego is as slippery and slithery a snake as one could ever hope to find. It is always an interesting exercise to exorcise elements of pleasure in hearing compliments paid to one's way of living. The discriminatory intellect gets lots of vigorous exercise in neutering the extremely creative feints of the Ego during the course of my conversations with my visitors.

This latter point, as a matter of fact, ties in with a more general observation in that positive social interactions seemed to affect meditative practice negatively while negative social interactions seemed to have no significant effect. From the point of view of social harmony and social utility theory, this is not an optimistic result. However, it is quite easy to see why this should indeed be the case. The mind seeks attachment, and attachment is generally a consequence of affirmative experience. Thus, positive social interaction results in the generation of large quantities of stimuli that the mind can attach itself to and grow in volume.

The yogi's task is to starve the mind and feed it deconstructionist versions of material reality, so that its moorings to the affairs of the physical universe may be detached gradually. Friendly conversations appear to proffer dangerous food for the mind to devour greedily and resume its noisy perturbations of the unconscious mind. Negative social interactions, on the other hand, cause the mind to flee inwards and gratefully accept the disassociativity that meditation provides. Thus, perversely from the perspective of the social contract, negative social interactions and social alienation appear to play into the yogi's strategy.

This brings us to the original problem. Can the practitioner be said to be correct in soliciting negative interactions with society to force the mind into subjugation? Intriguingly enough, this is precisely what aghoris and tantric practitioners recommend. An aghori will believe that the subjugation of the mind under control of his identity is worth the temporary discomfiture of the minds under control of other identities, minds which do not propose or desire to be starved at any rate. It is possible also, that the aghori believes that his behavior will stimulate thoughts of depersonalization and disassociation in his correspondents in the aftermath just as well, in which case, his behavior is actually extremely positive, since it motivates his social acquaintances to question the premises of physical existence too.

The greatest joy of writing is that there are times when clarity emerges as a consequence of the process. I did not see this aspect of the schizoid coldness that must naturally develop in a yogi's interactions with the world, but now I see that it is possibly of some social value. The archetype of the spiritual guru, with shining bright eyes and a benevolent message for all of humanity, seems extremely unreal and delusional to me. I am sure that that is precisely the mental posture that a therapist or a healer should adopt, since their mission is to bring psychological comfort to those who need it. But therapy ought not to be confused with the process of self-contemplation. There is always a tenuous link between meditative practice and social utility. Attempting to burnish it using tokens of religious or psychotherapeutic value might bring more social relevance to the system, but is a losing proposition in the longer term, since it will draw several into the practice in pursuit of tangential goals (freedom from stress, social welfare, peace and good will etc).

I now understand and appreciate better, accounts of the temper tantrums and socially unacceptable behavior in the lives of accomplished seekers. While I do not see myself succumbing to temper under any circumstance, I think that is primarily a consequence of my negligible spiritual standing. That is, I am not as yet firmly established in my practice enough to require anger towards infringers upon my daily routine to sustain it. For now, if one my guests is too noisy for me to keep track of the ticks of the clock during pranayama, I will simply stop and let him do what he is doing and start over. I can do so, because I merely have to count up to 48 seconds at any one time. More accomplished practitioners, who have to track thousands of seconds of breath suspension are unlikely to be as stoic if some ill-fated tresspasser broke in upon their silence.

In conclusion then, I find that my desire for solitude is understandable from the perspective of meditative practice. Solitude does not only mean the absence of other people, it also means absence from the desires and complaints of the body and mind. The performance of asanas is an effort at acquiring physical solitude, the performance of pranayama is a means towards acquiring freedom from the processes required in the ingress and egress of breathing, the performance of trataka and similar practices is aimed at sustaining mental solitude for long periods of time. And growing a long beard and ignoring basic social protocol is a good way of obtaining and sustaining social solitude and being free to contemplate Brahman and its manifestation (Hiranyagarbha) and the evolution of its manifestation (quantum mechanics) in peace.