haaathi-musings

[haaathi-musings]

Obituary

His name was Rudraksh James Ponni, also known as Rudy or JP to everyone who knew him or of him. He was 65 years old and was headed to the netherworld which was the right place for him, as he had once himself said so. He is survived by the whole world that has outlived him. He had no family as he had disowned all of them. He was not a man of means, but mean as hell. He never lent a helping hand, nor did he have a good word to say about anybody. Anger was always sitting on the tip of his nose and it took only a fraction of a second for him to abuse anybody who contradicted him. To be in his company was like a prison sentence. He was only interested in speaking about himself and the glorification of his past and his connections which increased his influence and depravity. He was a drinker, drug user and a womanizer. He evicted widows from their homes by increasing their rent after their husbands died. If ever there was an SOB, he was the one that came to mind. He had no friends. Nobody could handle the extremes of his temperament. He was debarred from many clubs, bars, theaters and residences. An arsehole like him never walked the earth. Ever. He was politically ambitious and wanted to be in a position where he could control and command people for his own ends. He wanted to be a dictator but that seemed tough in a democracy. Yet he dreamt of it day and night. His mentality was that of a thief, a scoundrel, and was a harbinger of evil everywhere he went. He abhorred charity and had never given a single rupee to anyone. He had cheated businessmen using the confidence scam and always got away because of his connections with powerful people. Even though they did not like him, they did his bidding as he had the goods on them. He did not consider this as blackmail. Instead he felt it was a fair exchange. He had framed people and got them arrested for coming in the way of his ambitious plans, using the authorities to do his dirty work. He had got his own brother arrested when he tried to get him to change his ways. His ill gotten wealth never stayed with him. Expensive medical treatments, high end bars and women, and high value bribes had depleted whatever he had made with his illegal schemes. Easy come easy go. He once sued his bhelwala for putting too much hot chutney in his bhel which he said gave him hyperacidity and he had to be hospitalized.

The thing about this man was that in spite of being a shallow, selfish person, a criminal and a sociopath, he bathed twice a day. So what can be said for him is that he was a very clean man.

[haaathi-musings]

This piece was written by me when I was a 17 year old stoner. I found it in a 30 year old journal. I MAY SOUND DRUNK, BUT BELIEVE ME, I WAS ONLY STONED. Do read it, just to amuse yourself.

Individuality is basically what I feel very strongly about. I mean, look at how everybody has got his own individual idea about certain things, which may be very different from your own. It is his trip as I say so all the time. This is basically something which cannot be changed because all of our thoughts are related to our own upbringing and the various things we have experienced and their effects on us and our minds, of which no two people can be having identical thought forms. Each person visualises things differently because of the above reasons and many many more and he does things in accordance with his thoughts and thus one should not try to make a person do things the way he wants them to be done, but let the person grow in his own fashion, but at the same time not forfeiting his own ideas and opinions. This in my opinion is a very ‘bum trip’ because I feel highly enlightened and want the whole world to visualise things the way I do, thinking that this may be the only way the world can achieve salvation or nirvana or whatever. I feel what I know is really great and that I am the coolest dude with the coolest ideas around. I may be the coolest dude with the coolest ideas, but is there any reason why the world should see things the way I do and live accordingly? I don’t know.

Richard Bach summed it up quite well in Illusions when he said that all of us in this world are not living in one world but are living in each of our own personal worlds. This does not mean the personal world as shown in movies or story books where the person in question has a fantasy dream world which he escapes into every time he has a hard time. What Richard has meant is that the way each of us sees things and feels things, is very personal and no other person can experience the same feelings or visualise things the way the individual in question does. This means that there are approximately five billion odd people living on this planet living in five billion odd worlds and they may see the same things as I see in five billion odd different ways and experience five billion odd different feelings about them.

So coming back to where I picked up Richard, I should not try to save this world of 5 billion odd people by trying to get them to see things my way because each of them may be having his own idea of looking at things and saving this world which means that there are approximately 5 billion odd ways to achieve this which means we are not falling short of roads to salvation or whatever you may call it and if each person is confident of his own road and follows it, then all of us will reach the same destination (if there is one such existing) using 5 billion odd different paths. So, eventually I reach one conclusion and that is ‘Live and Let Live’. I used to take this statement in the literal sense, meaning I should live and stay alive and let the other person do the same. The statement DOES mean this but now I see it also as an interpretation of tripping on your own and letting the other person go on tripping on his own and don’t disturb him. (Tripping is one word I use a lot but it is not in the context to drugs but basically a trip is life and a trip is basically what one enjoys doing according to me.)

NOTE: EITHER THE MAAL WAS TOO STRONG THAT DAY, OR MY DAD WANTED TO SEND ME ON AN ERRAND TO LOHAR CHAWL.

[haaathi-musings]

To look at yourself. To truly look at yourself takes a lot of energy, a lot of clarity and the ability to see yourself as you are as against who you wish to be. To see oneself honestly one needs to be put away all your concepts of who you are. Sometimes I feel I have been seeing myself through the eyes of others for so long that I have forgotten how to see myself. I will always be I. That is a given. It is the cloud of personality that comes in the way, the general persona of who you seem to be. Deep down I don’t mind it that much. It is a bit like changing cars. Takes a little getting used to but it gets you from point A to B. The impressions of your past are inevitably going to accompany you wherever you go. So will their fruit. Life, in other words, has to happen. It will in any case. Might as well make your peace with it.

[haaathi-musings]

Only seven miles from your goal go the words. A lot can be made out of nothing at all. But nothingness is everything. Being and nothingness being your ultimate goal, it is hard to digest how you became all that you are. Indian scriptures explain it as a never ending flow over many lives taking newer bodies along the way but carrying old impressions of your thoughts, deeds and desires. This turns into your Karma. It will propel you to be who you NEED to be, not who you think you ought to be. That desire is fuel for future lives. Got to abandon all concepts of being to truly free yourself. No matter how much I practise, the egoity always comes to the foreground. It is the very foundation of this nonentity. No matter what you say or do, it is an awake state that needs to be 24X7. You snooze you lose. I say these things because I want to say them. Does not mean that I am done with the excavation of crap which will reveal the Self which forever IS. This could go on and on. You gotta keep on working. I don’t know when I am going to give up. The very desire to be free, binds. Does it make sense? Some conversations need contemplation. Some don’t. Only seven miles from your goal, words from a song. I find them inspiring.

[haaathi-musings]

The I delusion is about our obsession with the 'I' that does not exist. Referred to as the little 'I' in contrast to our 'True Self'. It is a revelation to see that we are most at peace with ourselves when we are not there. I mean, the individual identity is a non existent part of ourselves which makes us live in our own delusion. When you go looking for this little 'I', you never find it. Yet all our actions are aimed at fulfilling this 'I' delusion. It is not only self importance, pride, ego, self-conceit, but also the very existence of the illusion of who we think we are. The loss of the little 'I' is the name of the game. Sadly you cannot wish it away. It has to be worked out by living your life till your allocated karma (prarabdha karma) has run it’s course. To live as a conscious being (our True Self) is our only duty. Humility is the key and it comes only on sacrificing yourself i.e. the little 'I'. Everybody has moments in the day when the little 'I' / ego / mind vanishes and they experience an unidentifiable calm. That is the moment when we are truly at peace, as our True Self. All the great Masters speak about the ego being the only hurdle between us (little 'I') and our divine nature (our True Self). The peace comes when we don't claim 'doership' of anything. Doership is in the domain of the little 'I' and that is the ego/mind at work. It is relentless, claiming all that it sees… devouring all that it wants... undoing the magic of existence.

[haaathi-musings]

One of the many things that get me thinking is the concept of coincidence. It is absolutely wonderful that a sign from a higher power can be attributed to coincidence. Any incident that makes us think outside our normal track can make us tap into a new perspective. And once the job is done, we feel the unreality of it because it was not within the parameters of our normal track of thinking. That is when it turns into a coincidence. It is difficult to believe that the higher power is in us and is us. It is we who create and it is we who destroy. We are all the same and yet we are so different. I have decided to let go. To see where this takes me. To experience and live whatever comes my way. So here goes….

[haaathi-musings]

I did not know of John Lennon till I read in the newspaper that he had been shot dead, when I was nine years old. A sadness enveloped me and I knew not what to make of it. I asked my mother who he was and she replied there was a very famous British band called The Beatles and he had been in it. I remember that it was the same year that I had been drugged and sodomized by my school principal on a class trip. The memory of this incident would vanish for the next thirty odd years and resurface with other memories when I was least expecting something like that in my quest for deliverance. It was in these memories that I found out more about myself than I had ever known. I remembered everything, more than a man should recall of his past, but less than what I strove to know. My faith in the resurrected memories was absolute. I knew them to be true. Some of them brought joy, while others brought heartache. And some left me wondering about what I thought of myself and how they contradicted my memory of who I had been. I was the same, but the memories that awoke, redrew the etchings of my self image in my mind. It was truly an awakening. Battles lost so long ago, I had now won. It was a strange turn of events that repaired my shattered life and which took me to what I was least expecting; a mountain of joy hidden in a sea of sorrow. A life sheathed in pain, now morphed into a life touched by Grace. I had become a man who had lost all purpose and had finally discovered my own redemption. It was certainly no random turn of events but a precisely timed gift from God. At last I had found Him. It was a heart filled with gratitude and love that started the conversation. No philosophy, no religion, no soul searching, no jargon, nothing!! It was the truest conversation I had ever had. A sincere tear shed in love for Him was the price of the ticket and He rolled out a golden carpet. He knew that my dues had been paid and my time served. He lifted me up and gave me the seed of a dream and breathed into me the power to dream. When that happened, His love embraced me and in that moment I knew that I was His and He was mine.

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There is a thief always hiding, waiting, for an opportunity to release its compulsive tendencies that have been riding you for uncountable lifetimes. Not easily noticed, almost dormant, hiding till you watch your mind at work with utmost honesty. Then you may be lucky enough to realize what it is that drives you. To understand the need of this vigilance, one must have suffered at the hands of such tendencies. It is not until the pain and awareness of the predispositions prevailing in an individual are experienced, can one decide to live with them or take steps to abort them.

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If you believe in and understand the endless journey of reincarnation, you must understand what it implies in terms of family, spouse, friends, children etc. It is only when there is unfinished business with certain souls, they come to occupy key roles in our lives, be they mother, father, sibling, spouse, children or friends. We only reap what we have sowed earlier. That is why good conduct and good actions are the mainstay of every spiritual tradition. They keep driving in the importance of good only to help the aspirant live a happy life. 

Suffering is not always optional. If one’s deeds are not particularly good, suffering becomes one’s fate. A lot is explained by the law of karma. It is the deed, fruit of deeds and destiny of every soul.

[haaathi-musings]

Mondays were the worst day of the week. The whole world was headed to work in what could only be called a sea of poor saps and unwittingly conditioned souls. They lived a life that has been engineered in subliminal ways to evolve into the life of worker ants. Equated Monthly Installments made them live the illusion of a free and spirited life. But actually, they had made themselves slaves to the powers that be. A working man is a happy man; he asks no questions and tries to pay his bills on time. He is always short of money and is already spending unearned income to pay for his lot of happiness this month. He is not aware that it is a lifelong deficit. The moment the deficit is cleared, he can actually think for himself; and that is something that they will not allow him to do. Prices will rise due to engineered shortages; wars and manipulated fuel prices will keep him enslaved to his EMI life. The opiate of the masses today is retail therapy. It is not keeping up with the neighbors as much as leading the neighbors now. The latest TV, car, phone will keep him living a life he thinks he can afford but he has hypothecated his life for it. A lifetime of inflation keeps him living from paycheck to paycheck and then some. And this is how the masses live in debt, forever and ever. Change can come, but he will have to sacrifice the superficial material happiness he aspires for, and think for himself and not believe in all the ways in which his lifestyle is sold to him, through movies, books, newspapers, advertising and the inescapable digital media attack that he is the target of every single moment of his life.

 

The writing on the wall is written in blood, “Disengage from the Matrix, or become its umpteenth victim”. Happiness is not a swipe away as the commercials claim; indeed it needs a freethinker to see it for what it is. And those who looked at it for what it was and spoke or wrote about it, disappeared or died mysteriously. A man is simply a puppet till he discovers the truth that all that is going on around him is a charade. Then he becomes a freethinker, a free man. The signs are out there, but his conditioning keeps him enslaved to the matrix. Being creatures of habit, it is a near impossible task. 

Economic wars leading to financial slavery by getting the masses hooked on the freebies and then withholding them is the way of this age. There has never been a time where so much was owned by so few; a world with so much consumerism and inequality, that it is now considered the patriotic duty of the citizens to raise their standard of living to keep the economy afloat. And that is where the machinery kicks in; advertising and news conglomerates control the misinformation that reaches the masses. All scientific research is in question now. Whom can you believe in? Crony capitalism is thriving while prices of essentials are skyrocketing. Whom can you turn to?

Nobody.

Swim or drown, it is only up to you. There is nobody else who knows or cares enough to help you out. Use your own assessment of what is going on and think your own way out. All sense of responsibility has disappeared in the haste to be the next Trillionaire. Social responsibility is a myth. It has always been about the balance sheet, power and profits. How much is enough? It is never enough. So slave away or grow your own food. Oh wait, the Billionaires have taken over that too.