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.
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.
2 comments:
hi nisheeth!
I will not comment on something so beautiful and so private.a Siddharth-like search for the oneness of the world.
All i can say that i am really,really thankful to u for sending me that beautiful composition.In my soundtrack,it is sandwiched right in between led Zep and clapton.i dont know the meaning,but it feels so profound,so soothing.like the cosmic drum turiya(i learnt it from u).no one can ever dislike u.lots of love,best wishes .yes,do keep writing of ur gradual climb up the Maslow's pyramid.your young friend,ravi.(and please do send me more of ur compositions as u keep making them.)
Do you realize you have the biggest ego I have encountered on the internet in years?
What you need is ego transcendence.
I found some of your website of interest, most importantly the references to MC Escher, Hofstadter and Dostojevski.
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