We are all alone ..

 The lockdowns forced us to be just by ourselves. To our horror we discovered that in our seclusion that not only were we alone, most of us are leading lonely lives.

In life, one can be amidst a crowd and yet feel lonely, on the other hand be alone and not feel lonely. Alone we are born and alone we shall leave this world. We are ultimately all alone, but do we have to be lonely?

What we call 'my life',  is our existence between the time of arrival and departure of each body in this world. Maybe significant for the individual being, but an insignificant phenomenon in the larger scheme of the universe.

The whole idea of life is to live it. Living means different things to different people, each one choosing his or her own interpretation of life and trying to live it accordingly. That is why we are all unique, each one very different from the other and the paths we choose.

Earlier living was relatively simple even though it was more dangerous. Yet we had a good spiritual connection between ourselves, our fellow creatures and nature. 

With the passage of time and more the information we gathered, the more we intellectualised our evolution the more lonely and distant we have grown not only from our world but even ourselves.

The entire world is being nudged, pushed, dragged, generally encouraged to follow a Western driven one size fits all globalist model, with  the promise of success, love, happiness and contentment etc.

These promises have failed. Now the leading illness in the developed world is loneliness. 

Many have turned to social media, even addicted to it foolishly believing that technology and a virtual world  will take away our loneliness and bring us meaning and happiness. 

Belatedly we are discovering to our great disappointment that meaning, happiness or contentment do not exist outside of ourselves for outside there is nothing, all meaning is only within ourselves.

I want Happiness.

My thanks to Mr. Nemi Chand for this beautiful words of wisdom

Must I live in fear?

The other day our friends accompanied by an intelligent and deeply religious man dropped in at our home. He spoke authoritatively on God, and religious practices and morality, which sounded more like a recording of the priestly class. The monologue was heavy and made worse by the lack of life in his lecture. My son whispered a question to me  "why does he never smile and why does he look so weary?"  

It soon dawned on us that the visitor misguidedly believed that  that religious people are not supposed to be joyful. God and religion was a heavy burden to be carried only by the   privileged few such as our visitor. To be joyful was taboo because being happy was considered frivolous. Lost deep in his religious dungeon he refused to enjoy the food, the beautiful weather, the lovely company of the people present.  The man might as well have been a totem pole for all the life he demonstrated.

We saw the light when he uttered the words "I am God fearing". That was it, the man lived in dread. He was consumed by fear that God would smite him down if he made an error, expressed a desire or to have wants.  To be happy was a sin in his belief system.

This belief system is not unique to our guest, for this fear is widespread. This malaise has afflicted a large chunk of humanity and many of them occupy high and exalted position in our society. All they do is spread the gloom. They have surrendered not to God but to priests who have evolved a self serving distorted message of God and the path to reach Him.

More hate has been spread, more blood has been shed in the name of God than in any other name or cause by these peddlers of organised religion. The continuous and ever increasing focus on fear gives rise to even more dread and then society begins to decay from within while maintaining a superficial sheen. This approach by Aurangzeb  is what caused the end of the Mogul empire in India.

God who created everything can only be found by love and compassion. He who creates need not destroy, He merely takes it away. Why would He want to harm insignificant creatures of cosmic dust like you and me?  He who protects and nurtures us looks after us like a loving parent, He would never harm us.

Many of the holy texts have been written by people long after the messenger of God has left this world in their physical form. To build their armies of followers, the leaders of organized religion only want compliance and rigidity, they care not for your spiritual development or growth. 

Compliance from the masses can only come from fear. That is why they advocate fear. Fear of God, fear of living, dying, loving and just being human.

Fear not God, nor tyrants who claim divine right to have the right rule over us by their terrible ways. Do not be God fearing but God loving.

Embrace God and love Him as a child loves the parent. Only the Creator can give you all you  need. Surrender to His will and live each moment as if it is your last, and you will live happily and die blissfully.

Talk to me about God.

It has been the fashion to teach children, that, peace and happiness that we seek  can come only by acquiring increasing wealth or power. In due course of time we discover that this advice is useless. We mistake happiness with temporary excitement from our possessions and our escape to various indulgences be it intoxicants, politics, violence, gambling etc. Most people claim they want to meet and be with God. What the vast majority really want is to be at peace and happy. For them God could possibly be just the best way to achieve that. Therefore believer, agnostic or atheist everyone is curious about God.  Who then or what is God? This is a good question, but what is the answer?  Like most people I talked and listened about God for most of my life. Talk unfortunately is rather cheap, so we indulge in lots of it. The more we talk the more confused we get. Parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, teachers,priests, media and God-men, all just talk and talk of God. Yak, yak, yak, is all we get and more confusion. It is extremely rare for anyone to be satisfied with the answers that we are doled out.  Most people merely accept the situation not daring to believe that the majority could be wrong, so they  accept what is told and move on. It seems that the effort required for comprehending God is so significant that the vast majority simply give up. Many sincerely hope to find the God, but that will have to wait for another time as most of them have more pressing matters to attend to. The challenge is even greater when God is sought to be explained within the boundaries of a religion. All organized religions great and small have been converted into nothing more than social institutions and serve no purpose other than to increase their power and reach.  Our entire society and world is driven by these religious zealots who have enormous political, economical, legal and self authorized moral clout.  They tell us that we can do business with God. So being the self centered fools that many of us are we try to bribe Him or His agents in the hope that our dreams and desires will be fulfilled. The more we go down this route the more cheated we feel. No wonder it is rare for us to speak with  so called religious leaders, because they often do not inspire us much about God. In fact they have ambitious targets and incentives to increase their headcount. They are like farmers, but who harvest souls and bodies. The self appointed agents of God serve only themselves, but we happily oblige them. What is the harm in offering a bribe if He grants me a favour for a minuscule fraction of my wealth?. _________________________________ Does this mean we should give upon God. On the contrary we must embrace Him, but how? Our curiosity often turns to confusion, not because the search for God is wrong but the way we seek to find the answer.  Mere utterances by us or outsourced to priests, rituals, pilgrimages etc. is not of much use except for fooling ourselves.  Knowing that we do not know is the first step in fulfilling our thirst to find God.  This search is an individual journey and I share mine with you.                                  ____________________ The first thing about God is that He can never be understood only experienced. God can be experienced both from within and outside of our beings. God can be experienced by us all the time but we do not realize it because we have lost touch with ourselves. Experiencing God from the outside.  Just look around us and see the wonder of His creation.  We struggle to build minuscule things and manage a few relationships. Just admire the  magnificence of creation and life. Only when in awe can we begin to search for the Creator. The more we connect with nature the closer we will feel ourselves near to God. Unfortunately we live in synthetic worlds and increasingly toxic environment. Rarer it is becoming for us to experience the clean air and water, the birds and the creatures that share our world.  If we want to experience God on the outside we MUST start with respecting creation and live in harmony with our environment. Comforts are required and we should attempt to be comfortable, healthy and safe, but must it be at the cost to the emotional and physical well being of ourselves and with whom we share this world? Experiencing God from within our beings. The greatest confusion is caused by the mind because  we try to logically understand God. God can never be analyzed but He can only be experienced. In addition to Gurus, messiahs, prophets a number of people have experienced God. Their experiences is sometimes outlined in stories, prayers, hymns and their works. However everyone's experience is different. So great is God and so diverse is his many forms and manifestations that each person who experiences Him has a different perspective. When we talk to, or read about or hear about those that have experienced Him we are enthralled and blindly try to copy them.  It is useless, because copying is like trying to merely fill a vessel.  There is no awakening nor is their any enlightenment. No wonder the atheist and the agnostic ridicule the believer and unfortunately their numbers grow especially among the young. Those that seek Him must do so not  with their eyes, ears or tongues but with their hearts. Find a master who will open your own heart to Him and you will discover and meet God. From my experience I can share with you the following; Respect and connect with nature and our surroundings.  Seek harmony with nature, our fellow beings and ourselves. Pause and still the mind by meditating.  Only the stillness we can discover ourselves and connect to the cosmos and God. Only the one who meditates can reach beyond themselves and seek God. It is said; "When we pray we talk to God, but when we meditate God converses with us."When the person is dominated by greed, anger, lust, ego and attachments to worldly things we distance ourselves from God.  All these things are transient and only God is permanent.  When we free ourselves of attachments our being is free to search for God. Be sure we will experience Him.  I should know for I have experienced Him at the height of my  joy and in the depths of despair. As Dada JP Vaswani the great spiritual soul said "Religion lets talk about it less and practice it more." Clinging to our puny egos and our material wealth we fail to realise that God is waiting for us to open the door of our beings to let Him in. It is useful to keep in mind that unlike us humans He is not swayed by mere talk. Wish you all a happy Diwali and a spiritual new year.