My Voice

The Sea Spake Thus:

2008-06-08T21:45:00.007+05:30

The mighty sea's all Love
All the sky is Prayer
The horizon is God.
The little waves on the water are the humans
Same as those little puffy clouds in the sky
And where the sea and the sky meet
That horizon is God.
The wave must realise that it IS the ocean
And the cloud that its nothing without the sky
Just the realisation shall be sufficient
To know the Mighty God..

Language of Silence

2008-02-08T19:28:00.000+05:30

Silence was the voice
Song of the heart
Serenity playing softly
As I treaded gentle steps
Deeper and deeper
Into myriad mystics of leaves
Majestic woods of great power
With stories to tell
Worlds to learn of from them.
Pure blue skies stretched
Above me
High above but oh so close..
Alone I was
With woods and silence for company
Drawing me into their imposing sway.
I then saw a child
A child whose eyes so innocent
But full of wisdom.
Eyes so deep, yet so pure
To me it seemed
That the child conspired with nature
And shared tales of the same core.
It seemed they were all-
Silence, child, trees, pure blue skies-
Trying to tell me something.
They knew the secrets
Of the universe.
Maybe they were whispering them to me.
Serenity held me still
Silence made me stop to listen.
And I knew.
In the language of silence.
I knew.
Do not ask me what.
Nature’s calling for you too
To tell you all the secrets it knows.

2008-01-31T17:11:00.000+05:30

"ONCE THERE LIVED A VILLAGE OF CREATURES ALONG THE BOTTOM OF A GREAT CRYSTAL RIVER.

"THE CURRENT OF THE RIVER SWEPT SILENTLY OVER THEM ALL-YOUNG AND OLD, RICH AND POOR, GOOD AND EVIL, THE CURRENT GOING ITS OWN WAY, KNOWING ONLY ITS OWN CRYSTAL SELF.

"EACH CREATURE IN ITS OWN WAY CLUNG TIGHTLY TO THE TWIGS AND ROCKS OF THE RIVER BOTTOM, FOR CLINGING WAS THEIR WAY OF LIFE, AND RESISTING THE CURRENT WHAT EACH HAD LEARNED FROM BIRTH.

"BUT ONE CREATURE SAID AT LAST, 'I AM TIRED OF CLINGING. THOUGH I CANNOT SEE IT WITH MY OWN EYES, I TRUST THAT THE CURRENT KNOWS WHERE IT IS GOING. I SHALL LET GO, AND LET IT TAKE ME WHERE IT WILL. CLINGING, I SHALL DIE OF BOREDOM.'

"THE OTHER CREATURES LAUGHED AND SAID, 'FOOL! LET GO, AND THAT CURRENT YOU WORSHIP WILL THROW YOU TUMBLED AND SMASHED ACROSS THE ROCKS, AND YOU WILL DIE QUICKER THAN BOREDOM!'

"BUT THE ONE HEEDED THEM NOT, AND TAKING A BREATH DID LET GO, AND AT ONCE WAS TUMBLED AND SMASHED BY THE CURRENT ACROSS THE ROCKS.

"YET IN TIME, AS THE CREATURE REFUSED TO CLING AGAIN, THE CURRENT LIFTED HIM FREE FROM THE BOTTOM, AND HE WAS BRUISED AND HURT NO MORE.

"AND THE CREATURES DOWNSTREAM, TO WHOM HE WAS A STRANGER, CRIED,
'SEE A MIRACLE! A CREATURE LIKE OURSELVES, YET HE FLIES! SEE THE MESSIAH COME TO SAVE US ALL.'

"AND THE ONE CARRIED IN THE CURRENT SAID, 'I AM NO MORE MESSIAH THAN YOU. THE RIVER DELIGHTS TO LIFT US FREE, IF ONLY WE DARE TO LET GO. OUR TRUE WORK IS THIS VOYAGE, THIS ADVENTURE.'

"BUT THEY CRIED THE MORE, 'SAVIOR!' ALL THE WHILE CLINGING TO THE ROCKS, AND WHEN THEY LOOKED AGAIN HE WAS GONE, AND THEY WERE LEFT ALONE MAKING LEGENDS OF A SAVIOR."

An extract from 'Illusions' by Richard Bach.

2008-01-25T21:09:00.000+05:30

We all ask. We all enquire. We all wonder. We all gape. We all think magic is extraordinary. We all think magic is tricks, nothing but skill. We all know it can be explained by physical laws. Yet we are not able to do it. We all scoff at anything extraordinary, making ourselves feel superior by chiding it. We all think the paranormal is 'weird'. And anything 'weird' is 'not alright'. Not alright is 'retarded'. And we don’t want anything to do with it.

Some of us acknowledge the fact that there may be something to it, but its 'beyond' us. WE were never meant to know about it. We were never meant to do magic. WE are 'merely' human! The ones who do it, who 'claim' to do it, if not tricks, may be the 'blessed souls', but not all of us are like THEM, are we?

We move away whenever there is any indication of paranormalcy. We don’t 'understand' it and we don’t know if it shall do us harm. Why must we 'risk' it? We don’t believe in co-incidences. We are agnostic. We believe in the theory of natural evolution. The basis of our lives is SCIENCE. The hardcore, basic laws of science. The laws which tell us that the earth is round, that we evolved from chemicals, that the sun is way different from the moon, that illnesses can be cured with pills. The 'science' which tells us that a stone if dropped from a tower will only hit the ground and not go upwards, that we can only breathe in air and not water, that we walk on land and swim in sea and the other way round is impossible.

We live our whole lives on the basis of these 'fundamental laws of nature'. That WE have formulated. That WE have thought of centuries before. That we believe in unquestioningly today. The idea of swimming in land is unfathomable, as is that of curing by just thought.

We entirely work within these premises that we've set for ourselves. We strive to make life more comfortable, struggle to alleviate the poor, spend millions on discovering new drugs. We teach, we learn, we manipulate, we calculate, we work, we enjoy, we have passions - all within this limited framework which we've set for ourselves. Never once have we thought about what might lie beyond it. Maybe we have sometimes, but the thought seldom culminates into anything, and moreover life is too happening (within this framework) for it to be interrupted by such thoughts. And thoughts are anyway just PASSING. When we were children, we used to wonder about such things, but were always told not to meddle with such UNNECESSARY questions - there is SO MUCH already to this life we lead! Why add complications? 'Aren’t you comfortable enough?' they said. ‘You have a nice house, a good family, a great school, nice friends. You play basketball, you read, you learn so much. You have aunts that give you presents. WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK FOR?!' We too thought about that. Yes, what more can we ask for? Whatever else we may ask for, they called it ambition. It was encouraged. And we became the go-getters. We sought out, we achieved. We have all that we want, and we're getting all that we want.We were told hardships are a part of life and we believed it. We were told to dream 'sensibly' and our dreams became limited to getting the highest post in the office, to owning that English crockery set, to getting a first rank in the class.

Whatever happened to the dream we had to fly when were children, the dream to get swallowed by the ocean and be part of it, the dream to see past the edge of the universe...? We were told such things are just FANTASY and we believe that today. We believed in soul mates when we were adolescent and we were told there is nothing like that in the world. We asked for love, and when we didn’t get it, we started assuming it does not exist. We drowned ourselves in work, or family, or convoluted philosophy, as was our choice then.

We propounded that magic is idiocy. We said that to believe in 'dreams' is to be a child, and implied it in the most negative sense as possible. We often used to phrase 'Don’t be a kid!' and scowled our dirtiest scowl. We BECAME all that we saw around us when we were children. The society that told us not to dream, the society which decided what is good for us, and when. And we utterly, undoubting, unquestioningly believed in the 'laws of nature' that WE formulated and called them that. The so called 'laws' that limited our world, so that IMAGINATION became art, that it became something distinct from our everyday life. Something that needed effort from many of us. We now say that we 'know' that dreams are distinct from reality. We know the boundaries of reality.

And anything that steps away from this definition of ours is termed 'paranormal'.
Have we ever once wondered why we have given this definition to reality? Why we have formulated these so called physical laws that govern every action and life. Why have we set limits to ourselves and all that we can do? What in human history caused such a thing to come into existence in our lives? And why are we still carrying on with it? Why have WE, who believe so much in the spirit of enquiry and in questioning everything, not questioned the very premises themselves, on which we base our each action and world-view? Have we ever thought why we cannot breathe water? Have we ever thought why we can’t cure ourselves, have we ever thought why we were told it’s not possible to become the ocean? Why the distinction between living and non-living? Why the distinction between love and hate? Why the distinction between science and spirituality? Have we ever asked why to these things?

Why, as humans, did we create these barriers, and thus limit our field of action?