It’s a yo yo. From flying free in the midst of exhilirating creativity, knowing that the being is going beyond the limitations of the self – the limitations of perceived and imprisoning sense of individuality, and knowing that all things take care of themselves, a knowing that lies beyond reason for there is a trust in the Universe. Like the deepest, most passionate feelings of love, where all else falls away. Like a veil of dark mist that is lifted from the eyes, like a cage that both imprisons and oppresses the mind has opened and the being steps out into exhilarating freedom. Where all observation is free flowing and interconnected, where no thought is imprisoned into structure, and passes as easily as the next one comes, like wisps of breeze that that touch and flow away… an exhilarated creative state of accessing the creativity of the universe. Creativity, Faith, God.
…..And from here plunging into the dungeons of day to day concerns for the most insignificant decisions that isolate themselves and take on a dimension far beyond themselves. To become the walls and the prison that the mind cannot escape. Where the mind obsessively turns into itself and convinces itself that the whole universe exists in nothing but doubt but for imposition and control. Where joy turns in to task. Where a fleeting worry , a fleeting concern can turn into a torrent of overwhelming imagined odds.
Where the mind in all it’s linearity screams at you – be practical, be practical ! Structure ! Structure ! You are losing it ! Impose. Control. Or it will all descend into chaos.
What is this ? Why do we yo you from one to other. Why can’t life exist in the first constantly ? Knowing the greatest inaction is doubt, and doubt is the key benefactor of the second mind ?
I urge those that have good broadband to go to
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
shekhar
Dear Shekhar,
you so very beautifully and poetically describe how the right side of our brain tries to flee from the clutches of the brain’s left side’s reasoning only to be reined in again by the force of our being that has spent its life in linear progression. But the left side also has created the tools that let us open the door to this wonderful part of the universe that resides inside our minds and that the right side of our brain allows access to.
Listening to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor was a revelation. In my mind she was still grieving for having lost those incredible moments when the veil was finally and gloriously lifted, when a feeling of love had flooded her being, but she also still trembled with apprehension over the fact that the mechanism that has created the blueprint to allow the back and forth gliding between the ecstatic and the sobering had almost forever been broken, irretrievably and with great finality. Listening to her has brought back a terrifying experience I’ve had almost 15 years ago. In the men’s room of a jazz club in upstate New York I had been assaulted and robbed and in the course of it had been choked into unconsciousness. There was this moment when the room got increasingly dark and when all cohesive thought processes ceased and when I finally had drifted into a blackness so total and absolute that I believe death must have a similar feel to it. In those few seconds when both sides of my brain tried to take control of my senses, when they were virtually engaged in a dialogue whether the inappropriateness of this terrible act was to be outweighed by this intensive lightness of floating through space I felt at the same time forsaken by all those who should have saved me. As I was unconsciously lying in a toilet stall, into which the assailant had dragged me, for what I thought must have been a lifetime, it was clearly the right side of my brain that had begun to stir first. By itself it could not create a coherent understanding of all the elements it was confronted with. As hard as it tried to assume a modicum of the left lobe’s function it could not understand what all the sounds meant it was hearing and why my face was near a toilet bowl and why I was lying on such a hard bed. (In fact, in my initial feeble stages of cognitive stumbling I thought I was lying in some hotel bed and some Kafkaesque haziness would not allow me to understand what I was doing there). Clumsily and with infinite sluggishness the right side of my brain had tried to process what it wasn’t meant to process. At the same time there was this distant urging of the left side of my brain to bring cohesive thought processes back into the equation trying to engage itself again. With great relief the right side had let all the pulses flow over to the left side of my brain which was storming back into the picture with a vengeance. It was a colossal moment, as though a film in extreme slow motion was returned to its normal speed when finally all the sounds and the pictures had brought back the true reason why I was lying in this miserable, utterly ridiculous position on a cold and hard floor of a sad and shabby men’s room. Later that night a doctor in a nearby hospital had explained to me in the austere and detached vernacular of the medical profession that I was only a few heartbeats away from sinking into a darkness from which not even the right side of my brain could have retrieved me. That night, I know, I had been reborn.
Kind regards
Horst
A worm had 500 legs and walked with perfect ease.
Till one day someone asked him how he managed to know with so many legs which leg was to be put ahead at any given point of time. He began to think but to his dismay soon found he could not walk.
Thinking/Reason/intellect has given us many things but has proportionately taken away our natural way of living. Someday when we will again outgrow reason and reach the level of intution or intelligence we will begin doing things with natural ease and without falling prey to such questioning. Then we will be living in what may be called our ‘sahaj avstha’.
Yes, then there will be perfect blending between the left and right hemisphers of our brain/minds.
Dear Shekhar,
Finally saw Jill’s video today and loved the way she explained the functioning of the brain and the moments when she was not able to figure out the dimensions of here physical body i.e. where is began and ended as her “I am” faculty was not working and that is when she found great joy in being united with everything is the universe. Based on my understand of the video I feel that our minds toggle between “I am” and “We are” and that great joy and understanding are to be found in the zone where we are connected with everything in the universe in the form of energy and consciousness. This also makes me think that God did want to think of ourselves as “I am” otherwise we won’t have that faculty, just that we must also understand our connection with everything around us, to understand ourselves.
Thanks a lot for sharing the video with us and hope all is well with you in New York.
Best Regards,
Himanshu
My dear otherself,
Thanks for sharing the Jill’s experience..true..
indeed brain is just an instrument of CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness is the REALITY.
In absolute silence sleeps an absolute power.
Reason was the helper. Reason is the bar.
Mind was the helper. Mind is the bar.
Ego was the helper. Ego is the bar.
Hi Shekhar
Beautifully said. Before anything else I want to say that since I first discovered this blog of yours, I have been visiting it frequently and find it spiritually rejuvenating. Also the issues that you address are various: love, sex, economics, cosmos etc etc but there is golden thread running through them all—self-awareness and reflection on the real purpose of our being. So thank you thank you Shekhar.
Yes it is a yo yo. And I am glad that it is not just me who feels this way. However I do feel that it is when we compromise on our daily spiritual practice that it becomes more difficult to remain detached from the workings of our ‘mind’ and thereby we lose control of ourselves. But there is so much negativity in the world around us that despite the best intentions it is prb impossible to always maintain the calm of the spirit that you describe so beautifully. And therefore it is inevitable that it is and will be a yo yo. Unless you become a hermit. But that should not be our motive, or should it? Certainly Lord Krsna said that we are here to fight and learn, not to shut ourselves up.
But then I see people who live in this world and lead a ‘full’ life but never seem to lose touch with the true nature of our spirits….peacefulness and detachment. And I wonder whether they are simply older souls…….is it that the ones who feel it is a yo yo are ‘younger’ souls and they still have much to learn?
Yes, the intellect has been harmful but was our journey not supposed to be one from light (satyug) to darkness (kalyug) and then to light again? Is it not that the soul seeks darkness and confusion to purify and rediscover itself?
Best, Shivani
Shivani, excuse to interfere, but yes you have said it right.
Each one of our individual lives while itself going through four phases of childhood, youth, middle age and old age – and that also means phases of senses, emotions, intellect and intelligence – is also a part of a greater individual life spanning many lives like the present and also passes through like four phases.
So even while we may be in our old age phase in this present life we may well be in an other, say childhood or youth or ‘younger’, phase of our greater life. It is because of our evolution happneing through cycles-within-cycles – greater cycles having between them smaller and smaller cycles, and our present life may be one such small life.
We get four phases because each phase owes its existence to what scientists call four basic forces induced four basic interactions which we have to go through in each of our smaller or greater lives. For learning more on this later part read my last post in the thread ‘Is nothing Something’, in which I introduce my book Self-Designed Universe to Shekhar.
Thank You Shekhar for sharing …
“My stroke of insight”, Great life time experience and explanation. Most fail to remember and describe.
Please enjoy what I found and most people I met also got a lot out of this, in depth details “Spiritual Reality” http://www.spiritual-reality.com
Here is sample http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1daj2_spiritual-reality-pt5_blog
Quest for “Who We Are” continues and can only make this world better.
Wow!! That was awesome in so many ways!! Thanks Shekhar!!
Will be checking some of the other videos on the site soon too!
Dear Shekar, This is an experiment for me. I have several blogs, which are personal writings, but I am developing my discernment and my writing and i was really amazed to come across your personal blog, when I was following the passing of Anthony
Minghella and I was moved to read your thoughts on the time you had spent and known and Anthony and I was amzed by the closeness I felt to both of your person_hoods. Spiritual people, who live in a right way, that makes the world a better place. I love his movies and I love your work as well. Having watched the ‘Elizabeth’s’ recently and it is just amzing that you are doing thias writing and sharing in such a public and personal way.
I realize the whole world iss not at your door everyday,bbut I found you and I just wanted to say, that I have read this post and a few others and the comments here and I spent the time to realize that there is something very special going on here.
I am not an intellectual and I am not a great success, but I am living in the western United States near Seattle, and I have a pretty good life, so I just wanted to give you kudos for being such a great man in a very real way…you are showing the light on the door to what is there if we would only accept the invitation at hand.
I will bother you no more. I will be following and reading and living and possibly writing again, but I only wanted to say Hi! and good show. Good luck with your project in NYC. I lived there in 1970.
An admirer…Good show…take care and may God Bless you and yours, Ulric
Dear Shekar,
Thank you for sharing your spritual higher self with us.Words that are enriching and healing.Thank You and hope You are enjoying New York!!!
Best
thank u Ulric and welcome. This blog is not mine. It just exists because it does. I was motivated to start writing it for no special purpose, but now it has it’s own life. But like a temple, I do not write until there is the possibility of some ‘faith’ that accompanies the writing. Some very honest search for the self – shekhar
hi shekhar !
‘happiness is like the butterfly that is resting on the palm of your hand………. but flies off the moment you try to shut your palm and trap it.’
i guess the first state of mind is the one where you and the butterfly are both relaxed, one with eachother……..at peace in a ‘creative’ state of mind.
the 2nd state of mind is where you are not happy yourself as you expressed above……..a forced mind set , not natural to you…….nor to the butterfly ( happiness ) 🙂
yet, i believe it is possible to have the attitude of the former that allows happiness to spread into your entire being………in application to the latter ‘practical’ side of life’s chores ?
Dear AJ,
Thanks a ton for the wonderful link…..
Truly grateful from the bottom of my heart…
Dear Shekhar,
Thanks again for the all the nice and different blogs that r constantly updated..
Most of them and their comments are enlightening.
I also wanted to compliment you on a very important aspect of life for me…. the way u care for your daughter is truly great , being so busy and still spending quality time with your child is really the greatest gift you can give her…
God bless her and you and all of us..
Best regards,
Priya
hey shekhar………ofcoarse you can be in the 1st state of mind that represents your creativity and happiness….! just dont allow the 2nd one to bully you ! tone down its intensity and train it to be in harmony with your 1st state of mind which is the real YOU ?
after all, what is the 2nd without the 1st..?!
without the creativity of the universe……..what is that ‘task master’ going to structure…….:)……??
this one is for metaphorme…….
hi there……..! i found you interrogating ashwani on ‘apnapan’ with the air of a sleuth having trapped his victim after a bit of search or as you put it….’hide and seek’ 🙂 .
know what ? you got it wrong !! that was not me……… i am not from the film fraternity, not an editor……..not looking for work from shekhar etc…….
i am here as much by chance as this blog is …..
in good ‘faith’ as shekhar puts it.
about the ‘diva’ with a thousand masks…..hey, there is not a single ,forget a thousand……..!
coz, shekhar knows who i am …….just as he probably knows who you are……. besides the name you have chosen for this blog.
have a nice day !!!!!!!!
mr.shekhar.
you have your own and unique style of making films.
well i have seen masoom,bandit queen,mr.india,then elizibeth…
well i liked masoom very much….
well am from south i do wath south indian movies very much..
to be fact i came to know about you recently in a magazine.
you pain at the time of partition,some heart breaking events in child hood…
ok let me come to the point…
you have used the word the moment the moment….
MOMENT THE MOMENT…
i.e
TIME-actually you were suppose to make a project called time machine.but due to some reasons the film was not made.
TIME-FOURTH DIMENSION.
DID YOU EVER COME ACROSS THE CONCEPT OF RELATIVITY.
TIME IS NOT ABSOLUTE BUT RELATIVE.
THE MOMENT THE MOMENT.I WANN TO SAY TIME IS RELATIVE.YOU WANN IT TO BE RELATIVE…
mr.shekhar
pls visit my orkut account.
i.e n
open orkut account then there is a search engine option
then enter
entanglement:time(vs)thought.
there are some pictures and messages
you can learn something abt
RELATIVITY.
its really time for making a film for time and scientific movies.ufo…
something like that…
i really do not agree with you regarding
the momemt the moment….i.e time as absolute….
hey i wann you to make a film with
liev schreiber,and i wann you be ur assistant director…for at least one movie….