THE HALLUCINATING HUMAN BEING

So, I was watching Bajirao Mastani last weekend and just when I was about to doze off, as the climax approached, the last scene of the movie really connected with me. Now, before some of you start to defend the movie, let me just clear the air by saying that I am not going to write a review of the movie. This article is not about that. I respect your opinions if you liked the movie (I am not intolerant, you see?) and agree with you if you think a 30 minute story was over-stretched into a 2 and half hour movie. So, let’s get to the point, shall we? Warning: Spoiler alert!

           

            In the last scene, the sick Bajirao runs in the river (I think Godavari) on seeing a cavalry approaching to kill him. The horses are running on water like it’s a small puddle and suddenly there are even flaming arrows coming from the skies. Bajirao is hit by a few of them and they light fire on water. He is also cut with swords by the men on horses. It’s real, quite real for him. He has in his hand his metallic belt like sword swaying and is fighting the cavalry but in vain. His attacks have no effect on neither the horses nor the men sitting on them. He swings his weapon on one of the enemies and the horse just passes through to an unclear destination, like the warrior in the river didn’t exist. Bajirao tries to fight and avoid the flaming arrows but they hit him but don’t really hurt him. He stops swinging after a while. At a distance, his wife, Kashi, looks at her husband swinging his sword madly at an invisible object. The whole world is peaceful except her husband. Bajirao soon realises the truth and the cavalry disappears. The arrows and the fire on the river disappear too. Bajirao is laughing. He is laughing as crazily as he was swinging his sword at, well, nothing. He’s realised the truth and that how crazy he was before. He is liberated and quite literally soon after, from life. Wouldn’t you feel liberated too? What if the job that you hate so much but have to do it every day, was a hallucination? Would this knowledge liberate you? What if the fact that your father doesn’t understand you, is just a hallucination you’ve been making real? What if your financial problems were a hallucination? What if that nagging girlfriend was a hallucination or that insecure boyfriend was? Not only your problems, the good stuff in life can be a hallucination too. That iphone worth almost half a lac (50,000), your dream house, your bank balance, the care free life that you enjoy, it’s all a hallucination.

            So why is it a hallucination? Feels pretty real, doesn’t it? It feels real to everybody else too, so how is it a hallucination? The answer to this is in the question, what’s real? Nothing is real. Nothing is absence of everything. I know it’s a basic definition and there’s nothing epiphany-like in it but have we really tried to understand this definition? Do you know when you get nothing? Alright, I’ll give you nothing right now. You ready? Just imagine this and go slow. The chair or bed that you’re sitting on isn’t there. There’s no table either. There are no walls around you. The clothes that you own, including the ones that you’re wearing right now, don’t exist. Your glasses (if you use a pair) don’t exist either. There are no bed sheets, pillows, blankets, footwear, bathroom supplies, food, trees, plants, animals, other human beings, grass, insects, birds, buildings, vehicles, not even air. There’s no Earth or other planets and satellites. This computer isn’t there either. It’s just you in this entire universe. You look around and it’s all dark, black. There’s no sense of direction or speed as there’s nothing to compare these two dimensions with. There’s a black out and that’s all there is, forever. You’re floating but you don’t know whether you’re moving or not and if you are then towards what or in which direction. Is this Nothing? No. Now, imagine that you don’t exist either. Now we have Nothing. Everything is absent, nothing is present. This is real. A blank canvas, an empty notebook. The moment you paint, the moment you write, is the second stage of hallucination. The first stage being, your existence. The moment you acknowledge your own existence, you start to hallucinate. This is so because, you start to create meaning out of your existence. Of course, you’re a baby initially so you accept the meanings that are told to you by others and as you grow, the basis of meanings created by you, are the ones that you had accepted before. Nobody is born an Indian or a Hindu or Muslim but these identities are labelled upon us and we are taught, really well, how to hallucinate. Some hallucinate about engineering, some about medicine, some about flying a plane and more. We create meanings as if they are permanent, we create rules as if they have been the governing force of all mankind, as if the ‘Gods’ want us to follow these rules. We also create a God and worship our creation as if it is our creator. It is all an hallucination.

            So, if this so and nothing is real, then how do we get out of this hallucination and reach that reality? There is just one way, death! All the great saints, sadhus and babas are aware of this hallucination but are still a part of it. This is so because we are not meant to escape this phenomenon and neither should we try to. We are meant to realise that we’re hallucinating but we can’t escape it. But the realisation does put our hearts at ease, doesn’t it? Knowing that everything around us is not real, it is all a figment of our own imagination and creation, gives us some degree of power. The fact that your partner is upset with you, is your own creation and thus you can change this fact. How? That’s a question only you can answer as it’s your creation but nothing is permanent. You create everything and you have the power to create whatever you want, it’s your blank canvas, your empty notebook. You may not know how to paint and write yet, but practice and you will be a great painter like Buddha or a great writer like Krishna, Christ or the Prophet. We call them Gods but they were all just normal humans like us, hallucinating but always aware of this fact and they created what we know about them today. They knew that they can’t escape the hallucination but what they could do was hallucinate about what they desired. And this is exactly what we need to do today. This doesn’t mean that we sit all day just imagining stuff. When you hallucinate, the hallucination is so real that it alters your actions. Therefore, whatever we desire, should reflect in our actions. If you want to be rich, your actions should be such that you’re getting richer. Rich people work hard (unless you’re Mukesh Ambani’s son) and they plan everything amongst a lot of other actions that they take. If you want to be famous, do something that makes you famous. Whatever it is that you want, take actions to hallucinate about that reality. In the end, none of it is going to last but for as long as you’re lasting, create for yourself that you wish could last forever.

Spirituality and Love

We know it's fake
A complete illusion it is
The world that we live in
Is no more than an abyss

I know it for a fact
Just my thoughts' manifestation
Yet I am drawn to you
Like you're my meditation

I know it's just chemicals
Making us feel what we do
None of it is real
Except for me falling for you

I wonder if there's some force as real
As illusionary this world is and which can
Fulfill its goal of bringing us together
Perhaps that's why the universe began

THE SUPREME RELIGION

There has been growing religious intolerance in India which is a matter of high concern. It’s more of an issue about self-expression but I’ll stick to the religious front for now. So, as you can tell by the title of the post, I am going to be talking about my religion and I know that it is the most righteous and supreme religion there is. Let the judging begin!

First, let’s understand religion. A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence (Wikipedia). Notice the use of the words beliefs and views. Since when did beliefs and views start being right or wrong? There always is a context in which a belief or a view is right and there always is a context in which they are wrong. My perception will depend on the context I place that belief or view. Thus, if I decide that a particular belief or view is wrong/right, there’s no problem with the belief or view, there’s a problem with my context. I may choose to follow/not follow a belief or view but at the same time, I need to be aware that there is always a different context in which the same belief or view must not be followed/followed. This is what my religion preaches. Also, by the given definition it is clear that religions are made to guide humanity; they are made FOR humanity and not vice-versa. This implies that if a particular custom or tradition no longer benefits the society, doesn’t advance it or make the society a healthier place to live in, then that particular custom or tradition should be done away with. It’s good to ask why; Newton did it and look where we are today. This is what my religion preaches and no, Newton isn’t my prophet. My religion asks me to listen to both sides of a story before arriving at a conclusion. It says that if I do not do away with my tradition of observing Earth only from the ground, I am never going to change my context and discover that the Earth is round and not flat. At the same time, I have to respect the person who believes the earth to be flat because he/she has never gotten off the ground.

My religion doesn’t make terrorists. I know you believe yours doesn’t either but have you really been following your religion? We all believe that terrorists are people who kill other people in the name of religion. So, are those people who kill other people in the name of cow slaughter not terrorists? People who kill other people because they ate another animal for dinner, or consumed alcohol legally not terrorists? They are all idiots (there’s a much different word for them in Hindi, starts with C). Aren’t those people idiots who choose to kill a guy and a girl just because they were holding hands, despite being of ‘different’ castes? Or worse, decided to marry each other? We all know who these people are, but there are a lot many, whom we do not know. There are a lot many who do not know themselves either. Do we understand what killing is? Death is just a step, before the last one, in the process of killing. Killing starts with desire, an intense desire to get away from a person. The second step is intention, in which desire manifests itself into a strong belief. Then comes decision, which encompasses planning, followed by action. Death follows action and the last step is to erase that person from our minds, soul and spirit, completely. If you have tried to avoid a person with a long beard, you’ve completed the first step of killing and become a terrorist. If you’ve judged a person with a turban, you’re a terrorist. If you have had any apprehensions about anybody based on their appearance, beliefs and views, you my friend, are a terrorist. I know you’re not causing death but like I explained before, smaller steps before death, lead to it. It’s good that you stop at the first step but you did take a step, didn’t you, however small it may be. A story isn’t complete unless you’ve read every word of it, however small it may be. An engine won’t work unless it has all the required parts, however small they may be. A drop will enrich an ocean, however small it may be. A negative thought will corrupt the mind, however small it may be.

Before the big bang happened, everything was collected at one singularity. After the big bang, that singularity exploded into different parts of the universe but all those parts were actually one before. The earth, moon, sun, all the asteroids, water, plants, animals, you and I, we were all one. Consider a cake is kept on a table. Looks delicious doesn’t it? You want to eat it? Go ahead cut it. Now, the piece that you’re holding, is it a different cake from the cake that’s on the table? If I cut the cake into 10 different pieces, are those 10 pieces different cakes? Now, I place each piece in a different room, have they become different yet? They are all the same cake, aren’t they? Then how are you and I different? We were all one cake billions of years ago, weren’t we? We look different because we got cut differently, or because perhaps you got the cherry on top and I didn’t. But we’re the same. There is an energy that is holding us together and it’s this energy that doesn’t let us cross the first step of killing. Sadly, some people can’t feel that energy anymore but we can all try emanating that energy towards them, can’t we? The energy called, love. And love, if is not unconditional, it’s not love, it’s a contract, an agreement. This is what my religion preaches. My religion called, Humanity.

THE EMPTY AND MEANINGLESS LIFE

Do you ever wonder how life got so complicated? Do you ever wish for simplicity in life, just like it was when we were kids? By the way kids today have a pretty complicated life themselves so, just think it over, but you get the point, right? I sometimes think about my purpose in life; how the universe is perhaps trying to teach me, train me for a better life ahead. Do you think about it too? Do you also try to understand the meaning of it all? If yes, you’re complicating life, my friend.

The day you were born, life started to become complicated. You were told you were born on a particular day of the particular month of the particular year. Who made these days, months and years? You were told that the building you were born in is called hospital. You were told that you came out of a tiny hole called a vagina. You were told that your name is this or that. You were told that going to school, respecting elders, loving one another, following etiquette, etc. is expected and is good. You were told everything. Do you remember questioning a lot of these rules as a kid? But then you stopped, because you started to make sense of it, rather, you started to get the ‘meaning’ behind all this. If there were things that couldn’t be explained with logic, you assigned the meaning of supernatural or religion to it. But everything had to have a meaning. There’s a little voice in the back of our heads that just can’t stop creating meaning out of everything. Even right now. As you’re reading this article, your little voice is asking, ‘Where is this article going?’, ‘Is the writer going to make any sense at any point at all?’, ‘What does all this mean?’, ‘What am I thinking now?’, etc.

Doesn’t your mind start racing if your girlfriend/boyfriend doesn’t call you when he/she is supposed to? Some of us are relieved but some are having crazy thoughts too, right? We are trying to ‘connect the dots’ like Sherlock and trying to arrive at a logical decision. Did you know that the word decision has its roots in the Latin word cide which means to kill off? So when we make a decision, we’re actually killing off all other options, all other views, all other possibilities. If one day your boss starts to treat you nicely, what does your mind say? It may say a lot of stuff but it can’t stop assigning a meaning to it. And that’s where you get all of life’s complications.

Quantum physics has proved that everything is an illusion. In many experiments it’s been found that an electron is not present where it is present, but where the scientists look for it, i.e., they saw the electron wherever they looked. On a macro level, it means that life doesn’t exhibit what’s true; it exhibits what we believe to be true. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, we feel what we want to feel and we live what we want to live. Take a second, let it sink. You would now realise that life isn’t controlling you, you’re controlling life, I mean the little voice in your head is. Terminator: The Judgment Day put it quite rightly, ‘NO FATE’ (well said James Cameron, well said). Do you see that life is what you make of it? It is what you create. You will always see the electron where you want to see it.

So what happens if the little voice in your head is no longer controlling you? I say no longer controlling because it can never shut up, unless you’re dead. So, what happens if you stop making stories, stop assuming stuff, stop trying to create meaning out of everything? What happens if you stop looking for the electron? What would you see? Think for a minute before reading further, because if you get this, you’re going to be a changed person. So, what do you see if you stop looking for the electron which appears to be wherever you try to look for it? Nothing! You see nothing. On a macro level, if you stop creating meaning out of everything, life becomes simple and simple and simple unless it comes down to Nothing. And that’s what life is, Nothing. Without self created meaning, assumptions and guesses, it indeed is nothing. Life is empty and meaningless. It sounds sad but it is actually true and the most joyous realisations of my life. Now that I know that life is empty and meaningless, I have all the space in the universe to create whatever I want to create. Of course I will listen to the little voice in my head and create meaning but I would no longer be bound by it. I would always be aware that in the end, there truly is Nothing that exists. Therefore, you are what you want to be. The meaning of life that you had been searching for all your life is yet to be created and guess who is the creator, YOU!

NAYI

Adding to the verses of the great poet Shabeena Adeeb

Khwabo mein dooba jagta raha
Neend kahin kho gayi hai
Jokhim koi bhi bada nahi
Zindagi mili nayi nayi hai

Jo sambhle hon gir kar kayi martaba
Rukna nahi wo jaante
Dekh kar baitha udaas tumhe
Chook shayad nayi nayi hai

Hain sadiyo se baithe oonchi imaarto mein jo
Hain pesh ana khoob jaante
Mizaaj apka dekh kar hai lagta
Shauhrat apki nayi nayi hai

Haatho mein haath daale chale dono
Khaamosh lab, palke jhuki hui hain
Ho rahi ulfat dilo mein unke
Abhi toh mohabbat nayi nayi hai

Suna raha tha prem kahani apni
Kis tarah tute dil ko siya hai
Beh chale do aansu palko se tumahre
Chot shayad nayi nayi hai

BADE DINO BAAD

Bade dino baad jo dhadkan suni

To thoda ghabra gaye

Kya qayamat agayi lene hame

Fir jana ke dil ko tum yaad agaye

Bade dino baad khaali baithna

Khaali sa nahi hai

Jo thi zindagi chand saanso me kat rahi

Uski ab aarzoo bhi nahi hai

Yun milna tumse sadiyo mein ek baar

Bas chand muskaano mein bichhad jaane ko

Jaise registaan mein badal zamaano ke baad

Aaye bas do boondein barsaane ko

Bade dino baad shayari ka shaukh aya hai

Zarre zarre mein hain jazbat bhare

Shabdon se humne dhoka khaya hai

Hai kehna toh bohot kuchh humein

Zara thehro, abhi abhi dil pe malham lagaya hai

Bade dino baad jo hogi mulaakaat

Sunenge firse dhadkan dil ki

Mat ghabrana jo ajaye qayamat

Chhipa kar tumko, kar denge jaan haazir khud ki

IBAADAT

Teri ibaadat se badi mohabbat kya hogi

Tere daaman me jo na ho

To jannat kya hogi

Jo nikle nahi ashk do chaar gham me tere

Wo zindagi, zindagi kya hogi

Jo har roz khuda se pehle tujhey yaad karoon

Jo na aaye zubaan pe naam tera

To zubaan se bair karoon

Mat bol patthar dil mujhey

Jo thukra diya tune dil mera

Dil ko patthar sa mehsus karoon

Bin tere lafzo ke namaaz na hogi

Jo dekhu na tujhey muskaate

To zarurat aankho ki kya hogi

Jo kiya na ishq tujhsey maine

To jeene ki wajah kya hogi

LESS DEAD

Look dear as I walk away
To make your wish come true
Because promised I had
That you'll never be sad
So I walk away
Like you wanted me to

Just a moment I need
If my words you'd heed
There's more to beauty than eyes can see
If you could feel my heart
We'd not be apart
And perhaps different your wish would be

Look dear as I turn my back
To joyous miseries seeded by me
You loved red, so I bled myself
But I feel less dead than I was
When you and I were still We

BENAAM

Kehte hain log jise ek ho jana
Kehte hain jise rishta purana
Jhukta jiske aage khuda tak hai
Puchha uske bando ne aye ishq, tera mazhab to batana

Dil ki kashti mein liye use chalta raha
Aya tufaan toh samandar se ladta raha
Puchhli jaat kinare ne mere khoon ki
Pyar hai kaafi, sochkar dil dhadakta raha

Zara ittila kardi hoti aye khuda
Jo banaye tune kaanoon pyar mein
Kar baitha ishq mai bin puchhe naam tak uska
Toh jana dil ka nahi, dharm ka mol hai pyar mein

Mat jao dar khuda ke tum
Jo bakshish uski thukrate ho
Kya kam hai nafrat is jahan mein
Jo laga kar bandishein pyar me
Khudko insaan batate ho

Dil mein liye pyar aaj bhi chalta hu
Naa mazhab na jaat
Na dharm kisi muskaan ka
Bin puchhe naam uska ishq aaj bhi karta hu