Everyone around the world is leading their own individual life unrelated to others. Unrelated means functioning from an isolated centre and this centre, this self is the source of difficulty in any relationship. Isn’t it true that this self is the origin, the beginning of all the contradictions, divisive approach or self-centred approach? We all are trying to be an ‘organised self’ and want other people to act in the same way, so that we have a homogeneous society; ignoring, that this very self is the fundamental cause of the whole disorder. The very nature of the self is to create a virtual boundary which must intrinsically bring disorder. By creating multiple ‘organised self’ we want to create a better society. But basically we are expanding that division which will eventually lead to creating something larger than the society like a city, a nation etc. And as we try to increase our tribe, we are creating more and more wars, sufferings, etc. The major issue is that we are programmed to act in a certain way, for eg. I am programmed to act as a Hindu and someone else is programmed to act as something else, and we all go through this life without introspecting and looking at what we really are. Where is the freedom if we are just mechanically conditioned to act in a certain way? If a person is allowed to roam around in a confined space is that a freedom? Freedom has no condition or limitation otherwise it is not freedom at all.
Freedom is joy, love, compassion or something which is independent of time and it cannot be achieved through mental confinement or isolation or any other method. We will have to take a journey psychologically, to question why 7 billion of us fail to live freely externally? According to my understanding , we all are programmed to be isolated psychologically and want to project freedom externally. The external world we see is the actual projection of that self which is divisive in nature and is an isolated one. Can we as human beings achieve freedom externally without breaking the psychological boundaries? Our activities are the physical manifestation of our psychological thought, so any amount of external repair won’t bring freedom to us even if we try for thousands of years. It has to start from within, we have to achieve psychological freedom through introspection. The freedom and eternal bliss that we are looking for lies within us. The day we perceive this, we will be able to achieve Freedom. There will be no individual identity to fight for and that instant perception of immense Freedom will stay forever beyond time and space.
Sanctity Of Silence
My life has been completely driven by the mountains and it has given me some of the best experiences. I always wonder how some ideas spark into obsession. Everyday I think about mountains and find ways to be there, even after knowing that the situations don’t align the way I want them to be.
A strong recollection of the moments which I spent in those mountains gets projected and I become the only spectator of my own past.
Travelling in mountains on motorcycle invokes in me myriad emotions, making my mind an emotional kaleidoscope. Every emotion has a character attached to it, making it an individual amongst other thoughts and emotions and I keep assigning every peak with an emotion ,making the mountain range a replica of my inner being.
A mixed feeling of exhaustion and jubilation sets in while riding in mountains. Those moments come so rarely that I never want them to end.
While looking at those vacant spaces on the top of snow capped peaks, my imagination of silence up there, creates multiple patterns which change every time I look at them. Those silent spaces up there tell me that all the regular patterns that I perceive are the mirages in the infinite randomness of existence.
While riding in mountains I become an explorer, taking the arial view of the mental and physical space and finding new routes to scale new heights and conquer problems to look beyond. My motorcycle rides thrusts me into the parallels of mental and physical explorations, and I travel through the sanctity of my inner space.
Sometimes I feel that these experiences add one piece after another and I feel like I am about to complete the unknown puzzle by adding more to it. I think in the end its all just our perceptions towards the experiences we have. There is no puzzle to solve.
While riding I feel: up along the long delirious burning blue sky, I have topped the wing swept heights with easy grace, where never the larks or even the eagle flew, and with the silent lifting mind I have trod the high and trespassed the sanctity of silence, put out my hand and touched the face of Infinity.
I would like to end this with a quote from Aristotle:-“The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur.”
Lets travel more and gather rich experiences so that our life stands tall like a peak of accumulated experiences. Some day I may amass those experiences and achieve heights which can sustain a sanctity of silence.
Motorcycling in Himalayas – A Chrysalis – A Mental Metamorphosis
Motorcycling has helped me a lot, to grow into a person who I am today. Motorcycling for me is like a thought. The only difference is that it takes me to the remotest parts of the external world the way thought takes me to the remotest part of my inner world. There is a third aspect which bridges the gap between the external mode of travel and internal mode of travel for me, and that is the Himalayas.
The more I traveled through the remote Himalayan regions on my motorcycle, the more I felt its exact resemblance with the untouched remoteness of my inner self. In that moment, my thoughts and my motorcycle become one and I become that fine line which separates the outer and the inner remoteness. It feels like I am at the centre of the mirrored images.
Motorcycling made me realise that the journey towards the untouched remoteness is full of ups and downs, but once I am in that zone I get transported into my inner solitude. The calmness on the outside makes my mind calm like a pond of water without ripples. I acquire the reflection of everything I see on the outside. I become transparent revealing the stones underneath as past events and occurrences that made ripples within me in the past but raising my level a bit in doing so.
My motorcycle is a trampoline which I use to jump into my inner self, just with a turn of key. In the remote Himalayan region no one knows me but there is a welcoming emotion latent within people’s approach. I feel blessed being away from an identity that I have made for myself in the city life. I feel happy not getting recognised by what I do but by just being there as a human. Similarly as I go away from my egocentric identity, towards those remote regions in mind, I feel a sense of freedom, detachment from the overpowering ego, welcomed by the distant silhouettes of bliss which were obscured by the stagnate thoughts.
Himalayas for me has been a protective layer and a tough teacher which tested me on every turn and made me physically and mentally stronger than ever before. It is a chrysalis for me and will remain to be till I reach a state of complete mental and physical metamorphosis and remain in that remote region where I, me or self, everything fades away and becomes one with everything that exists.
Nature And Nostalgia
I can still recall how great it felt as a child to perceive natural features like a forest, a river, a dark cloud, or rain. I also felt good at the thought of any stories, games or music. This way, I had a taste for aesthetics and fun.
Those feelings started fading away in me as I grew up. First the aesthetic disappeared and then the fun. Dark clouds and rainfalls turned into environmental phenomena that turned me gloomy; rivers were nothing fascinating; trees and forests turned boring. Later, the stories and music I enjoyed stopped being fun and here I am today. There are glimpses of beauty and joy — but sporadic and vague.
I didn’t grow up, I grew dull.
A lot of factors are responsible for this change: the practicality of life, the conscience of adulthood, depressive thinking, anxiety, all have played their respective parts. Very well, in fact.
But this afternoon as I stared out of my window at the impending dark clouds and glimpses of blue sky, I — after a long time felt alive. A feeling bubbled inside me that took my thoughts to the fond memories of childhood, the beauty of the sky above, the fascinating that my future can be, the importance of feeling and the beauty of life itself. It was a powerful feeling. Although the feeling didn’t last long it was enough to remind me of what I had been once upon a time and what I have been missing in my life all these years.
We get worried about ourselves a little too much — that’s the issue I think. We get too caught up in what/when/why/how we should be/do which turns us into mere pendulums. There’s success and failure. There’s either excitement or frustration. While that is okay for survival, I don’t consider that to be a life lived. I have stopped considering it to be a life felt. I don’t think a life not-felt is a life understood.
There are such diverse things inside and around us and we have this amazing ability to feel each and every one of them. Some of those are tasteful, some disgusting. Yet we get to know their nature through this ability of ours without having to get physically intimate with them. But we don’t do it. We are too eager to grow up. We want to mature too early. We want to do things faster. What we miss in all this is life. We get successful, but we overlook life.
A little reminder once in a while that doing is the means and feeling is the end!
Existence – A Palette Of The Universe – An Integration Of Nothingness.
Since childhood I always felt that Existence as such was weird. Here we are on this Earth, isn’t that odd?Well, of course it’s odd. Now the question comes , what do I mean by odd? Well, that’s different from even. What’s odd stands out and what’s even lies flat. But we cannot see the outstanding without the flat background. Here we are standing out , it’s odd. Each one of us is odd : strange, unique, particular, different. How do we know what we mean by that, except against the background of something even, that is not differentiated, like space or universe?
I get this curious itch in mind and I start to think why is that so? After a while I think that is a meaningless question, but the curious mind takes me to science and other investigations to find out about the unexplained how of everything.
I want to know what it is, this happening, this thing called existence. I have asked this question to myself long enough and it suddenly hit me that if I could answer it, I wouldn’t know what terms to put the answer in.
When we investigate the properties of nature, we do get some answers. All the answers are in terms of particular structures, forms, patterns; and these can be measured and their behaviour can be predicted.
But when I ask myself, what are these forms and patterns made of, like what is it really? I cannot think of anyway in which I could answer the question. Because I would have to have a class of classes.
It is like saying, are you an animal, are you vegetable, are you mineral? Are you male or female? Are you Christian or a Jew or Hindu etc? We always classify ourselves to give an answer to the question, what is it?When we classify we distinguish an inside group from an outside group.
So what we want to know is, what is the group of all groups? We cannot imagine what the outside would be, so we cannot answer the question what is it?
Even the physicists have finally abandoned the quest for stuff and they gave us the description of the universe entirely in terms of form, the pattern, not the stuff. Now what’s the pattern made of? Surely there must be an answer to that. When we look at the stuff through the microscope, all stuff turns into form, it becomes articulate. A piece of cloth looks like some sort of stuff but when we look at it under a microscope, we will see the crystalline structure of cotton, or whatever it’s made of. We wonder what these crystals are made of? We magnify the microscope further, we find molecules. We magnify further, we find wavicles. The wavicles must be of something, but they are not.
We find that substance or stuff totally vanishes as we try to understand it.
How does it matter? What does this mean? Is it important? Or in other words, does it measure upto anything?
Matter comes from a Sanskrit root ‘Matra’, which means to measure. From this root ‘Matra’ we get another word ; Maya. Maya is generally translated as illusion, although it also means magic, creative power. The word illusion switchover, we get that from Latin, and that comes from the Latin ‘Ludere’; to play. So are we trying to measure the play of this creative power by still remaining a part of it? It is like I am trying to bite my own teeth.
The world is a musical phenomenon. Good music never refers to anything except the music itself. We cannot ask a musician what do they mean by music. What is it intended to express? Listen, that’s the meaning.
Trees are treeing, stars are starring, clouds are clouding, rain is raining, and if you don’t understand ,look at it again.
We notice that all these suchnesses, appear and disappear, they keep changing, they come and they go. But if we get hung up on our particular form, it creates a duality, whereas we are our form, we are what we are doing.
Existence to me is nothing but an integration of everything that exists. We are a pattern or a form which is drawn from the palette of the Universe. We are just a mixture of certain elements which is sustained by another mixture of elements; whose existence is not traceable. We are that vast thing that we see far off from our telescopes. We are all as much continuous and rapidly changing with the universe as the waves with the ocean.
This may be the meaning of existence ; or maybe the meaning of our existence is actually not within the scope of our understanding.
Yoga – An Evolution Through Union – An Unabridged Self
योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः – मन अर्थात् चित्त की वृत्तियों का सर्वथा रुक जाना योग है ।
yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ – Yoga is hindering the Chitta from taking various forms(Vrittis).
Scientific development may help us in materialistic achievement but it may not be able to achieve the eternal peace. The ancient yoga may help to get rid of turmoil, hazards, and so. Practicing yoga is very much helpful to maintain peace, to lead and to uplift the human being. But the so called types of yoga may not help alone in evolution. Sri Aurobindo integrated all sorts of yoga to achieve the ultimate aim. He believed that the integration of all yogas mentioned in the Gita helps the human life to be transformed into a celestial one. For the total development of an individual he stressed on integration among all the areas of yoga, not on any one. He formulated three main stages, a ‘Triple transformation’, in the progression of the Integral Yoga: the Psychic, the Spiritual, and the Supra- mental. Therefore, the Integral yoga i.e. the synthesis of physical, vital, mental and spiritual being takes us from lower level of existence to higher level and to the highest level.
Yoga means union. It integrates our body, mind and thought process. Yoga is both – a path and the destination to a superior consciousness. This unifying power differentiates the human being from an inferior animal. Yoga is the exchange of an egoistic for a cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the supra-cosmic, transcendent un-namable who is the source and support of all things. Yoga is the passage of the human thinking animal towards the Cosmic-consciousness from which he has descended.
Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality’ and ‘the union of the soul with the immortal being’. The essence of yoga is the contact between the human being with the divinity.
The integral yoga is the way of a complete Self-realisation, a complete fulfilment of our being and consciousness, a complete transformation of our nature-and this implies a complete perfection of life here and not only a return to an eternal perfection elsewhere. The object of this Yoga is not to liberate the soul from Nature, but to liberate both soul and nature by sublimation into the Cosmic- Consciousness from whom they came.
Evolution is the process of liberation. Consciousness is the basic element to be transformed into higher and wider level and at last greater perfection occurs. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supra-mental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Super-mind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved cosmic activity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.
The truth of existence is it’s ‘becoming’ and evolution gradually unfolds the truth. Evolution is not the evolution of ‘matter’ but evolution of ‘consciousness’. Consciousness is the life force, the energy, the motion that creates everything in the universe, from the ‘microcosm’ to the ‘macrocosm’; evolution step by step from mind, higher mind, intuitive mind, over-mind, and super mind.
The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the cosmos and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His. Thus in a sense cosmic force, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a cosmic transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the cosmic Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The cosmos and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of creedal statement, but fruits of the soul’s inner experience.
An Un-Familiar Brain – Finding Optimism Of Childhood
Time plays an important part in our lives. I always wonder as to why does time speed up as I grow older or why do I think it does? Why does it feel like time was much slower when we were little kids? It has always interested me that how a summer break in school would feel like an infinitely long duration and how the college years felt amazing! Everyone kept on saying to me that those college years would be the best years of my life and after that it would feel like a blink of an eye and I will suddenly be 60 years old! At that time I felt that my life had already peaked out and nothing more adventurous or fun was left in my life. Right from the college days till today I have always been thinking, that, are these the best years of my life? Thoughts kept coming in, have I peaked out? Am I too young to peak out at this age?
I spent my twenties figuring out what I am best at and had many experiences working with multiple people and organisations. After sometime I realised that I am turning 30 and as an adult I was supposed to know who I was by then. In my 20’s I realised that I liked traveling a lot on my motorcycle and especially in hills, but I also had a new beginning towards my career. I was seeing myself work my way up the chain of that career. But a continuous thought kept clouding me all the time . Do I want to do this forever? Would I regret having been in this career and when I turn 60 would I realise I never rode my motorcycle the way I wanted to? Never doing the thing that I always dreamt of? I would regret that for sure.
So I started to plan out travel plans with my better half and took the ways which mattered most to both of us every day. We travelled extensively from easternmost Uttarakhand till the Northernmost Himalayan territory in Ladakh and J&K. All these years that we spent traveling felt like an entire lifetime, like a new childhood. My motorcycle is all that I own in this world and traveling with all that I own, along with a person that matters the most to me is an experience that cannot be conveyed by 26 alphabets.
Travelling to a new territory which has a different language and culture, activated a curious learning mode in me which I had missed since childhood days. I was learning new things and looking at new landscapes, turning my brain into an optimistic mode. I was discovering this world again and I felt like I was learning to speak again. Trying to speak the native languages of the places I travelled made me feel like a toddler trying to speak up new words for the first time.I experienced this amazing stretch of time changing, I saw things that I didn’t know existed and I just felt wonderful again just like a kid.
Whenever I was on these trips, I always felt that time had stopped for me. Every time I returned from a long trip my friends told me why I was back so early, as I had just left a few days ago. I would tell them that It had been weeks since I have been on a trip. They had been so busy in their routines and life that they didn’t perceive what I had perceived; this incredible expanding sense of time. And this made me curious as to why this expanse of time is felt by me and not by my friends.
Past decade for me has been like living my teenage years again.
My curiosity led me to some research and I found a fascinating thing about fear; time seems to slow down when we are scared. Research states that time doesn’t slow down but what’s happening is, our amygdala (a part of brain) is over producing the memories, that is why in times of fear we have deeper and richer memories. Since we have deep and rich memories, our brain perceives that as taking a long time but it doesn’t. Why does our brain do that, because our brain marks important moments, it wants to study them. We grab onto these moments of fear and the interesting thing is it is also an existential fear; its fear of who we are going to become; it’s fear which the brain latches on to. It remembers every thing that was important in our lives like moving to a new city, first job, first relationship, first kiss etc.
The opposite of fear is routine and familiarity. Our brain doesn’t want to be scared and it doesn’t want to be turned on, because it is like our muscles: it likes being lazy. It wants to establish a way to check out. So once you find a way to fit in this world and not be so stressed, our brain tries to make a safe space just like a stagnant line which doesn’t like to be disturbed. It is not turned on as it was, and it comes at a cost of time slipping through your hands.
This reminds me of a return journey study that I read some time ago in which people were asked to travel from point A to point B and return from a different route which was equidistant. The people who returned from the same route felt they returned faster because their brains were not expecting anything new and the brain was not much active. While the people who returned from a different route found it slower and longer because of the expectation and optimism about a new road. Their brains were turned on because of the anticipation of a new hill or a valley after a turn. They were aware of the journey and because of this awareness they paid attention and because of this attention the time seemed to stretch. This study really explained a lot to me as to why I felt the same on my motorcycle trip.
Similar to travel, our life is also a journey and we remember a lot from 15 to 25 years of age because many things are new to us and we still look to settle for an identity. So the brain is completely turned on till we are not in a comfort zone of our identity. On my motorcycle journey I become a seeker who is wandering and my brain never gets to a zone where it stops getting amazed at the views and experiences. On my trip I accidentally do all these things that expand time; it is not about making the time to slow down, it is about expanding the time by making the experiences deeper and richer and making our brain produce so many memories that a life of 100 years feels like 1000 years.
Explore the Unfamiliarity in places as well as in your brain to find the Optimism which you might have lost in this well familiar-routine of daily life.
Society – A Genuinely Fake Congregation
After a long session of repetitive life from the past 30 years I suddenly felt, what made me act in a way that I never wanted to? What is this inbuilt response from the brain as a stimuli, which comes as an automated response when I am in a particular situation? Why am I conditioned in a way which focuses on matters that make no sense as soon as I am out of that so-called “Society”? Why am I forced to act, eat, sleep, dress up in a way decided by some person 1000’s of years ago? Can’t I be spontaneous and act the way I want? Are any of my ideas or responses my own or imposed upon and accepted by me unknowingly? Am I the prisoner of my own locker, making it stronger everyday by putting in new reinforcements or conditions, which make this trap rather stronger as life progresses? Or Is this society a big penitentiary and I am just a barbed wire which seems to be different but is a part of it, protecting it?
As children, we are made to believe that we are individuals and we have our own identity, free will etc. Our questioning mind learns, acts and talks the way we see other people around us. We start thinking ,talking and acting the way we have seen people around us in that society and start feeling that ours is the best way. We have been force fed with this ego-centricity. Other people teach us who we are. Their attitude towards us is the reflection in which we see ourselves growing up but that reflection is not who we truly are. But we cannot realise, rather we accept that reflection to be our true nature and keep acting as if we are programmed computers which will only give mechanical outputs.
The social environment in which we are born creates a massive impact on us. It acts as a mould which makes similar pieces that can only fit into themselves. We never realise that our most private thoughts and emotions are not our own. Our brain can only comprehend thoughts and images which are not invented by us. Everyone has a similar emotional reaction to a situation. We copy emotional reactions from the people of our society, never thinking there can be a different approach to a particular situation. Our minds are severely clouded with the darkness of the social environment we live in and we as individuals cannot exist apart from a society. This whole society is our own extended mind and body.
A child from infancy is socially indoctrinated in a way that he or she cannot resist that indoctrination. Society becomes a vicious loop which has no exit points. A child is taught to think freely within the limits set by the society. He is told to act the way someone acted a century ago and when he acts that way, he is considered the reincarnation and torch bearer of that society. When that child meets a child from a different society, his actions make him look foolish, because those actions are considered to be fools in that society. A child grown in such a social environment becomes permanently confused and grows up being the one having no thinking power of his own, because he has followed what was taught, having no thinking capacity of his own.
Every society is trying to become permanent and rigid. I have realised that the more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
I cannot live a life following the do’s and don’ts, which paralyses my power of thinking and acting spontaneously. No society teaches us to be spontaneous because if we become one, we won’t be indoctrinated into the past thoughts and future projections of it.
How can a society define terms and conditions for loving, living life and being natural? These all happen themselves as a spontaneous behaviour like a heart beat. We already possess all these qualities which cannot be put into certain terms and conditions.
Society teaches us by comparison and when we put that learning, to test, by looking at the stars at night, we are not able to make any comparison between the right and the wrong stars. Because the universe is spontaneous and always moving, not sticking to a similar pattern.
We are living in a society entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between the all powerful causative past and absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectations. We never realise that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than the present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked and described about, with what it actually is. We are sick with the fascination for the names and numbers; symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
Life is very simple if lived spontaneously. Life is neither carelessly drifting into the future nor fearfully clinging to the past. Life is being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive always.
Living a life according to society is like going to sleep and never waking up and living spontaneously is like waking up and never going to sleep. You and I have slept a lot so try to be awake for the rest of your lives and become a torch bearer of a Cosmic Society.
Serendipity – An Un-Truncated Intuition- A Eureka Of Discovery
Serendipity is the ability to make fortunate discoveries accidentally. There is an art to finding something when you are not looking for it. It is one of those small things that make life worth living. In this modern day world, we have become monotonous to such an extreme extent that the chance of finding something accidentally has no probability.
We have become precise in every aspect and have developed softwares to give us the wanted results even for matchmaking, undercutting the Serendipity which comes out of finding something interesting while dating someone . Now, we plug a list of characteristics into a Web page in search of our True Love, more like ordering food from a McDonald’s menu. We do it all in the name of saving time. It is efficient, but dull. When you know what you want – or think you do – you lose the adventure of discovery, of finding something for yourself.
Everyone is trying to find fulfilment out of the activities which everyone else is doing, watching the same TV series, having the same gadgets, wearing outfits which are trending; doing something which is started by someone else and following it blindly; taking away the creative power of mind and restricting it to follow what others are doing. Can a mind find fulfilment out of copying someone?
Fulfilment is an expression of experience; experience unique to each of us, not tailor-made for someone else. Fulfilment in any case is a matter of experience and no amount of teaching, following or copying can express it. It cannot be described in a way that can really be understood by a mind that has not undergone the effulgent transmuting experience.
Serendipity has enriched my life with essential nutrients allowing me to harvest an abundance of life force, which I never knew existed in me.
For me it started with Motorcycling in the Himalayas. The silence contrasting with the soothing soundtrack of tires crunching on gravel. The unexplored places on the outside making me realise the unexplored places inside my mind. A far horizon acting as a line of division between sky and earth seems to indicate the different hemispheres of my mind; one side thinking that the earth and sky meet at the horizon while the other thinking that the earth and the sky emerge from the horizon. The beautiful vast valleys and the high peaks demonstrate how beautiful life seems with all the ups and downs. A stunning view after a blind turn makes me realise how life can be beautiful if we keep moving through the blind turns of life. The zeal of moving through the unknown places replenishes the will to keep exploring ourselves in whatever way we can. This continuous un-truncated intuition while riding, happens to be the Eureka moment in my life and I will keep riding till my mind ceases to be my mind and become something beyond it; till my life changes into a thing vast and calm, intense and powerful that can no longer recognise its old narrow self. With my mind, my body will undergo a mutation and no longer remain the animal of desire and petty impulses but instead become a conscious and radiant living form of the cosmic order.
An average man even now, is in his inward existence as crude and as underdeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. We need to find that fine line between keeping our life routines completely negligent towards the chances of discovery and keeping it open in certain aspects where the joy of finding something accidentally can change the way we look at ourselves.
The modern world, it seems, is conspiring against serendipity. But we cannot blame technology.I have met this enemy, and it is us. We forgot that we invented this stuff. We must lead technology, not allow technology to lead us. The world is a better and more cost effective place because of technology, but we have lost the imperfections inherent in humanity- the things that make life a messy and majestic catastrophe.
We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must re-learn how to be a human- to start again as we did as children- learning through awkward and bungling discoveries.
Just imagine – without Serendipity I could have missed all of this!
A Motorcyclist’s Perspective
At the start of a long trip, a little nervousness along with excitement sets in my mind. I didn’t know if I would make it. I had a motorcycle, my life partner and a combined will of both of us, to explore. Seeing a country from the seat of a motorcycle gives me a perspective that cannot be achieved in any other way; I feel every up and every down on my way.Sometimes I am hindered by the wind, sometimes pushed along. Being vulnerable makes me appreciate the kindness of strangers and fellow riders.
My friends gave good wishes for the trip and I left my apartment; soon the enormity of the trip that I had undertaken sank in.
It felt incredible to be on my motorcycle after a long break. My senses prickled with all the new sights and smells of a culture so different from the place I belong. I began my journey along the silk route, which was used by early traders who carried salt and sugar on their shoulders. This route has something latent in it. Every person who takes this route has something on his shoulders, whether an army officer having the responsibility of keeping the territory safe or a rider like me having the responsibility to ride safe every moment and to offer help to every passerby in every way possible. This route sets in a sense of responsibility for the reasons known only to the travellers themselves.
I rode on an average 200 kilometers a day on a tough terrain and slept inside the roadside shelters which never allowed me to get disconnected from the outside. Other than visible thin wooden walls ,everything from outside felt similar inside as well. From windchill to low oxygen levels- everything stayed with me through out that stretch of the route. On that remote highway, I had the most encounters with other riders, with whom I had an unsaid connect ,displayed through the small thumbs up gesture while passing by. Bikers have a strange connect with each other because they all know the amount of sacrifices they had made to be at that place, in that moment.
The combination of strong winds, high altitude and rough roads creates obstacles in the travel and slows me down to make sure I pass through, watching the spectacular beauty of that region. There were times when no one crossed me for many hours and I felt like going through a no man’s land. This uninterrupted solitude is very relieving. Solitude doesn’t sets us apart from other people; quite the opposite: it unites us because we have this tremendous privilege of being able to communicate with each other through the little windows of our senses.
Some places are so remote and enchanting that they are not known to the travellers at large and have no name. I felt that not everything has to be shared on the map, and location tagged. Its good to keep things sort of a little secret.
After 3000 kilometers and 15 days on road I finally made it back home.I was glad to finish it and I knew I would be happy about it a bit later. Once I started to look back at that beautiful journey, that beautiful memory; those were the best days, the best time of my life. They have given me so much; so many friendships ,so many experiences, so many beautiful things that I have seen. It brought me to the next level in my life, because I believe life is a series of events and one thing leads to another, and for me that probably started the day I sat on my motorcycle 13 years ago.
At that time I had no roadmap to follow at all. I probably wouldn’t have developed this perception about life without this motorcycle journey. It taught me that I enjoyed living outside and more connected with nature.
I think everything is connected. If you do something scary or adventurous today, you will get creative, and tomorrow you will be inspired, you will find solutions and you move on from there.If you do nothing today, tomorrow will be exactly the same.
Spark – An Ignition Within
Sitting in my room I thought I needed to clear my mind and just get things into perspective about my life goals, about the goals of the journey I was about to partake in and why I was doing this? what I wanted from it? I thought that this trip would help me to internalise things and I will take the time to become untangled and quiet.
Spark works for both man and machine ; spark for travel in me gets aligned with the spark in the spark plug of my motorcycle and having the same spark we push each other and travel unlimited kilometres. The long straight highways, the white centre line of the road and yellow boundaries act as a ladder which takes me to a different dimension of life called mountains. In the mountains, I feel like I have arrived into the journey of life that I always wanted to live.
Sometimes I think I don’t need roads to travel nor any vehicle. The whole journey starts within my mind and gets fuelled up with a will to change the monotonous and robotic routine of city life. From anticipation to execution, I live the journey everyday within my mind and every second of my execution while on the trip feels like a deja vu. To be able to manifest what I had thought, is like inventing a new dimension and putting it into production.
I like keeping the mind blank as a photographic plate and I let the retinal lens capture whatever is out there in the wavelength of light spectrum.
The vastness of the landscape makes me feel so lost in time and space, and I make no progress or visible progress because the vastness of the landscape creates an illusion that I am stationary while actually I am moving. It feels like an infinite and never ending blissful road with huge mountains connecting the earth and the sky in distant horizon. As I write, I am just looking for words to describe what I had seen and felt in that exact moment ,but words have a barrier which can be crossed over only by the power of sight and for that you have to be there in that moment.
The whole area above 4500 Mtrs is just other worldly and incredibly beautiful. There are geysers ,salt lakes, mineral lakes- while all of it is a cold desert. While riding, some places I came across were breathtakingly beautiful and I thought why I was not aware of these places before; a similar thought which comes to me when I arrive at a state of mind I never knew existed before. The outside world is completely relatable to the world we have built inside our minds and the more we explore on the outside the more we open up on the inside. We need to go outdoors to find a way inside.
As I travel through the showmanship of the clay, the journey on the outside becomes the mirror image of the psychological solitude and I develop a seekers perception, accepting the duplicity of deception which mind and matter plays.
A part of our life remains untouched if we don’t travel. Life is all about living in the present moment; the past and the future are misunderstandings of the mind which are either gone or projected. The only experience that exists is in this present moment and this is what “existence” is.
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