Natasha’s questions (comment posted under the Void), led to this play of thought:
“Love for another being is not neccesarily the only way to search for your yourself, your consciousness. But ‘LOVE” in itself is essential to find yourself. Love is the ‘harmony’ that embraces all the contradictory forces of our Universe, so only through Love you can experience them all as one.
I often imagine my self (because I am a visual person) dancing the Tandav with Shiva. But the dance is so Chaotic, so unpredictable, that the only way I can dance in sync with Shiva is to Love Shiva, so absolutely that you dance absolutely in Synch with Shiva. You are at that time in Harmony with Shiva, you are Shiva.
And you are right of course. To love another human being is not the only way to find yourself. But for a lot of us, we find we can give more passion in loving another human being, than we can to concepts like God, or to an idol in a temple. But if love is pure, then I find no difference in loving a concept like God or another human being. People that find love through faith and worship also are also supremely capable of finding themselves. With a lot less heartache I guess. We all have our paths, and each one is as relavent as the other.
You asked if it is selfish to love just to find yourself ? Hey, I don’ know the last time I fell in love looking for myself actively. They were never related activities. They become related as love went deeper and so deep, that you know that just sex and words alone cannot fulfill your yearning for each other. Then you search for a deeper meaning to why you love each other so much, and discover that the yearning is for God. And since God is nothing but consciousnes, the yearning is to find yourself in harmony with something that goes beyond your own cage of Individuality.
The real question you should ask me is, how can another human being be the constant like Shiva ? What if your are not loved back with the same passion. But true love, true passion cannot be obbsessive. Love is not possesion. It is giving and not taking. What will kill love is the desire to possess. For in the desire to posses, you are asserting your own individuality, the very thing you are yearning to lose !
You asked about contentment in love ? Have you found yourself then ? Is there no yearning then ? Have you become satisfied with the balance of existence in an earthly relationship ? Are you no longer looking for harmony with the Tandav dance of Shiva ?
And does contentment mean a cessation of the search ? Does contentment mean a cessation of Passion ? Does contentment mean that you no longer are finding new things about each other every moment ? How do you live each moment as if there was no past and no future ?
Will this always be a Question ? Yes, and more questions. Questions forever. That is the nature of the Universe. Otherwise we fall into the trap of becoming trapped in our own misrepresented reality, in our own Maya. Which is nothing but a weaving of our own fantasies.
And there is nothing wrong with that weaving. It is the reality once we have woven it. That dance of ever shifting reality is Krisna’s Leela. Krishna’ play. But it ceases to be Leela if you become fixated upon one reality, if you do not question it. For the next reality, like Shiva’s Tandav dance is unpredictable, chaotic and nothing to do with the previous reality.
So live in the reality, make it so real for yourself that you are absolutely and completely passionate about it. But knowing that the reality is just of that moment and what you created in your imagination. If you become fixated upon it, then you are seeking a future for that reality and you are no longer dancing and questioning,
or Loving
Phew !!
Shekhar
Shekhar, the ‘question’ is a ‘doubt’. Doubts are gaps in our ‘absolutely fulfilled’ nature. That nature is Love.
dude…you are becoming empty…what ever you have typed is absolutely PURE! there is no ideology in this entire universe which can counter argue with your words!
if at all at any point you were THINKING while typing, go back to that point and analyise
shekhar,
nothing is objective , everything is subjective.i know i am saying something conctrovertial but after a long thought thats what i agree upon. we imagine this plane of existance where there is infinite scope when perhaps it is bounded by the number of sentient intelligences – that is all there is to our universe.
we reach a conclusion when we cannot think anymore or have no more energy left to invest in such thinking , questioning. so all conclusions are limited outcomes. it depends on how much we factor into our thinking.
knowledge is always limited since the unknown is always greater than the known – which again is what i believe , which you may not agree with – for some truly wise ‘yogis’ or ‘rishis’ , perhaps the known is greater than the unknown – or even there is nothing unknown , but for me ( as i guess is the same for you and other readers ) the unknown is more than the known.
what it means is that we need to keep our conclusions open ended- till such time when we refine our definitions – of ideas and words.
like , love is a word and selfless love is an oxymoron- to be possessive of the object off love is the most natural thing which we deny – to me , there is surity and security in experiencing the possessive love – even when i am the object and my girlfriend expresses such possessiveness , i feel everything is well.
Only when the limited is transcended for the larger whole can we transcend posessiveness – it is something that happens subjectively and cannot be discussed and is not a measure of how great someone’s love is. The fox does not become a tiger by burning stripes on itself ( an old saying).
Cheers,
Rudra.
Mr. Kapur, I am very intersted to know what sort of reflection or spiritual insight did you get from studying the struggle of the “Mahdi” in Sudan and how did it affect your beliefs if at all and your way of thinking?
“Otherwise we fall into the trap of becoming trapped in our own misrepresented reality, in our own Maya. Which is nothing but a weaving of our own fantasies.”
It is as if we are sealed in our own dream like some figurine in a fluid filled paperweight with swirling snow flakes when you shake it. It is like the reason why certain species of sharks keep moving. Sharks have to swim continuously to force water over their gills or they will suffocate. There is a similar psychological condition known as alexithymia (a condition where an individual cannot recognize his or her own feelings) due to addictive or dysfunctional characteristics. The individual craves almost ceaseless action, which enables them to avoid acknowledging the questionable, possibly abhorrent, things they do. However, when the individual experiences a cessation in their cyclic behavior, when the Maya is torn, usually through trauma of somekind, such people are forced to stop moving and reflect. They have time to think about their behavior. How what they do affects other people, about feelings of emptiness and self-loathing, haunting them since childhood. And then they crash.
wow, You were surely in harmony with the tandav when you wrote this!
My meagre imaginations have yet to wake up to allegories. Are you not afraid of being misunderstood in this world of relative realities?
Again thankyou for sharing and I do hope you find your true love.
The world of relative realities, as you put it, is the only reality. Each moment we are conjuring up our own illusions/interpretations. It is the desire to define everything that kills what I call is Krishna’s Leela. For in our logic, definition leads a confined space and time, and therefore definitive past and therefore a logically constructed future.
It precludes any possibility of there being multiple realities. Am I afraid of being misunderstood ? I am struggling myself, and not preaching. I am questioning and not really answering. So my questions should not be misunderstood.
shekhar
The objects or feelings or thoughts are all mental conceptions.The mind rises after the rise of the I-thought or the ego. Wherefrom does the ego rise? From the abstract consciousness or Pure intelligence.Soul, mind or ego are mere words. There are no entities of the kind. Consciousness is the only truth.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
23rd August, 1936
http://www.tamilnation.org/sathyam/east/ramana/talks_with_ramana_maharshi_2.pdf
Shekhar, You have created a beautiful space here. Though I may step back from time to time not able to figure out your words, I find myselft drawn to this space very often, and I can’t put my finger on why! Best Wishes.
Dear Shekhar,
I feel the passion in your words– I envy (in the good sense) your serenity.
I think you are speaking from a privileged position though–please do not get upset at me. I think I understand your vision–it is so pure, as Kedar puts it, and so idealistic. But this loving without conditions and limits is saint material. And Saints build their own reality outside the reality of the world.
You say that we must question our reality because we may be entrapped by it. Even when we reach a level of contentment, we feel something is missing. I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, this is the reason for which many relationships end. Is it possible to want too much from another person? What you are describing cannot be found in another human being, as you said, and we should keep on questioning, and searching to satisfy our need for the spiritual.
But still I feel there is a danger here–how can you trust so much? How can you surrender so much? How can you live outside the real world?
Always?
Dear Shekhar and friends,
this is not related to the topic discussed in the entries, but I desperately need some information, and maybe you can help me.
I am doing a research on cortly life and love in the 15th and 16th centuries at the court of Sikandar of Lodi and I cannot find anything in the internet. All the material I am able to find deals with the Moghul period. Can anyone direct me to some sources or people I can contact? Why is the Sultanate period so mysterius?
Thank you so much.
lu, quite near where I live is Sikandar Lodhi’s tomb in Delhi. I am surprised you cannot find information on him. Have you tried the History department so the university of Delhi ? Shekhar
The questions keep on erupting like a volcano leaving the answers as mysteries in the web of life. Sometimes I am tired, tired of unfolding the mysteries of life. Then I ask myself, am I ready for stagnation? I look around and I find people, in trains, buses, on the roads hovering around with a look of acceptance of their misery or just their languish routine. They have no questions but a hope of a new day with the same routine. They have no purpose but to survive the day. I wonder, where has love vanished? Is it like one of their routined activities? Can I lead such a purposeless life? I feel suffocated and decide to move on my journey of thoughts and unfolding questions…
I have one question that I have been pondering over since many days. Is physical attraction very important in determining one’s future love life? Intensities of feelings may vary but how do u handle it when feeling of guilt and responsibility towards the other person take over the feelings of love for him? In the process, I feel I was deceiving myself more than knowing and searching for myself. I am yet to unfold its mystery…
Nikita, sometimes we jusge other people’s conditions and life from our own fears. I do that too. I am so renning away from structure, that when I see anyone in any kind of structure, I impose that on myself and feel the fear and frustration inside myself. I am s often surprised what lies behind people that feel like they are stuck in structure. Even a monk in the Monastry feels like he is stuck in a routine, a structure. But if he is a meditative state, then to him my life of nomadic adventure feels pointless mundane and steeped in illusions.
Is physical attraction important ? i think the first look perhaps, but then there is a reason you get physically attracted to some one, for if not, then everyone would be attracted to the same person. Attraction, passion and sexuality are also attempts to communicate at deeper levels.
Guilt ? Responsibilities ? They are the biggest killers of the joy of love. Mostly they arise from feelings of possesion or of control. We create dependency, and then call it feeling responsible. It’s our ego that says we can control someone else’s being, and often taht arises from our own fear of abandonment,
shekhar
Hi Shekhar…
I can very well understand what u write…coz have felt it myself….
Shiva, Vishnu(or Krishna) and Brahma are three states in which we can exist…
Whenever a new thought touches our mind…excites us…when we see the sexiest girl on the street or Spiderman jumping on Screen..the exubereance of emotion…where we fill overwhelmed by ecsatsy…like when we think of a new poem…thats Brahma…exploding into existence from the primordial egg of non-existence… emerging from the billion-petalled lotus of imagination…accumalting in form of the finite Word…and expanding in a multitude of personas inside your head.
Then there is Vishnu or Krishna…dancing the circular dance of Rasa(STring theory???), controlling the eternal Chakra of time, pervading the endless sagara of space, on the million-fold serpentine realms of realities, emantaing the silent conch-sound of motion, under-the Iron-maced rule of Order, forming a multipetalled lotus of beauty. That is Vishnu the controller, the one who hypnotizes and stabilizes the Universe with the beautiful Maya – like when you are engrossed in a thought, or reading a book or making love.
ANd lastly theres shiva..the realization to finally “let go”…its starts with breaking the order and submitting to the eterenal Tandava of Chaos…drinking the poison of Truth which opens the eyes of transcendences, which burns the illusion of my singular existence and ultimately stabilizes in the formless shapeless constancy of inexistence which still holds in itslef the roots of the new seed of the fires of creativity.
And when u realize these deeper attributes to the Gods…they cease to be mere dieties and they assemble in yourself… u feel wonderful dancing with the Three(and their consorts Thought, Feeling and Action)..and you feel oragsmic doing so.
I have experienced what you have mentioned. I have loved someone so purely with such intensity and devotion that I began realizing my inner self. The only problem is it is very hard to find someone to love who would understand this kind of love…
I would say that a similar thought has been beautifully explained by Vivekananda in his works on Bhakti yoga.
Have you written more on similar topics? Can you please share some links?
-Vinayak