Auroville, the City the Earth needs..

"A liquid light
in an electronic universe,
fuels the lightening union
of timeless souls.

Its raining a shower of ecstasy
if you have the power to see."

The walls of the chrysalis are crumbling. There is an intense anticipation in the creature who once used to be a caterpillar.. what is going to happen? The eyes see shimmering colors, never seen before. Strange sounds fill the air. Strange smells fill the senses. With each stretch of the what-is-this-pain thingy, there is more freedom of movement, less tension and a sigh of relief.

Hey! Wait a minute.. how many legs did I have? Now.. there is.. one, two, three, four.. umm, five and six?!! Only six?!! How am I gonna walk? Holy crap! And these two.. ughh! I - I didn't have these things before.. and they move like this.. like this.. and like this.. and like this..

Oh no! Ohww nooo!! I have.. I HAVE WINGS!!! That means no more branch climbing! No more leaf chewing! NO MORE SPINY HAIRS!! I AM FREEEEE!!! Finally, FINALLY free from gravity!!

Okay, okay. So what do I do now? Let's try this.. A step here, like this.. and like this.. and... a flap of the WINGS.. whew!! Mann, this is tough! What if..?? What if these things are not strong enough to carry my weight? What will happen then?? How to take that final step and fly? Why did nobody tell me before? HOWW to do this?

"There is no darkness,
only an absence of Light.
There is no evil,
only a fear of the unknown…"

Today, I understand Gadzookz to be the soul of a dear friend who was my father. For all practical purposes, it is assumed that he is no more, but one day my mother had a dream where my father told her that he is in a place where there is no fear of death. It was so obvious that my father was absolutely in a place where there could be no fear of death.. and yet.. HOW did this message reach my mom? Where did it originate? Why and.. WHEN??

Isn't humanity's predicament much like the Butterfly's first tentative steps in its attempt to fly? We are armed with amazing technology, much like the colourful wings of a Butterfly, but restrained by centuries of Caterpillar habits, unable to use them in an appropriate manner to solve the real problems of Life.

It was a grim moment of truth when the doctor told me about my father's condition in hospital and I touched his hand, reassuring him that there were alternative therapies that we could try and things would be alright. A few days after his release, I was reading a book about the reality of the soul, in the hushed beatitudes of a strange silence, beyond the experience of what is normally understood as death. I read out a passage to him, subtly implying that the inevitable was not really the inevitable. Somehow, there is more to it than we understood.. or understand.

I received an answer from him, from the "other" side, a little over a year after he left his body in 1999, I happened to stay over at a friend's who was a doctor at a private hospital in New Delhi. He left me at night with the stereo playing our favourite songs.. and in the morning, when the first rays of the sun filtered into the room, the light fell on a poster, pasted on the wall beside the bed, which I somehow believe, was my father's answer. It said..

"The day will come when my body will lie upon a white sheet neatly tucked under four corners of a mattress located in a hospital busily occupied with the living and the dying."
"At a certain moment a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to function and that, for all intent and purpose, my life has stopped."
"When that happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life in my body by the use of a machine."
"And don't call this my deathbed. Let it be called the bed of life, and let my body be taken from it to help others lead fuller lives."
"Give my sight to the man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman."
"Give my heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain."
"Give my blood to the teenager who was pulled from a wreckage of his car, so that he may live to see his grandchildren play."
"Give my kidneys to someone who depends on a machine to exist from week to week.
"Take my bones, every muscle, every fibre and nerve in my body and find a way to make a crippled child walk."
"Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that, someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against her window."
"Bury what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow."
"If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all prejudice against my fellow man."
"Give my sins to the devil. Give my soul to God."
"If by chance, you wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or words to someone who needs you."
"If you do all I have asked, I will live forever."

It is impossible for me to explain how I felt after reading those words. I was totally convinced that "he" had communicated with me in this mysterious arrangement of circumstances and yet, how to share this with others that leads to the realisation simmering at the bottom – that death and dying could indeed, be an illusion?

The message was even more characteristic of him because he did have a certain prejudice with the friend in question, in whose room I stayed and while HERE, he even frowned at my friendship with this friend, (If you must bury something, let it be my faults, my weaknesses and all prejudice against my fellow man..) which explained all the more that this was indeed HIS answer to me.

In the time that followed, I became aware of my father’s presence in dreams because there are no doubts in the dream state, and in this manner, the concept of Onederland is unfolding.. (Tibetans call it the “Bardos”.. or is it Wonderland??) a slow realisation dawning, that there must be a place where EVERYTHING exists in the true form and when we have a glimpse of this place, either in the wakeful state or in a dream or in our wandering imagination, our perception of reality SHIFTS. It leads me to ask another question: Should we assume that the physical reality alone is REAL? Does everything HAVE to have a form that we can touch, hear, smell and taste so we can confidently declare that it exists, otherwise it doesn't? Or is it a deficiency of our mechanism that is evolving, so one day we may know a manner of life that is not subject to the ravages of artificial time and hence, cannot decay.. or die?

I do not have all the answers.. but one searches for clues and they lead us on to strange paths… strange encounters… things that completely remove the thought from the mind that we are indeed, searching… always searching, for something to fill an emptiness that does not really exist.

Only a sense of wonder remains… and gratitude fills the heart… that Life is so Beautiful.. and at the bottom of everything, there always seems to be a miracle, waiting to happen…

"Everyone in this world
somehow, somewhere
is living a lie.
Homes do not shelter us,
Clothes do not cover us,
Laws do not protect us,
Death does not kill us,
But Love,
Our willingness to love
and be pained for it...
Love alone sustains Life..."

There was a point when I looked at Abba and I could see that he was letting go. Not that he said anything, it was simply apparent that he understood the inevitable and accepted it completely. Ours was a perfect demonstration of the fact that relationships are determined by the spaces in between, and not necessarily by the intensity of agreement. So he said very little, and today I understand so much!!

Understanding this took me all the way to Toronto in Canada where I found another friend, a close comrade of Abba from the days of the Soviet Union, co-incidentally my landlord and poignantly reminding me of another face of Gadzookz reproduced here..

Oneness... continued...

I remember... a haunting loneliness that evening, holding His hand and feeling safe... walking out of a cinema hall on a rainy day... and not being able to focus on the street and the people... lost in the drama that moved my depths... a thousand scenes in hundreds of places, under a cold sky or a hot sun... in a sparkling beach or before a deserted lake... returning home, silenced by a silver moon... and laughing with friends after shedding tears... memories that flash by like a movie in my mind... sleeping with the radio on and suddenly waking up to hear a song that hinted a feeling from the faraway dream in my heart... walking aimlessly along a crowded road, then stopping to check my inbox and getting lost in the e-mail of a friend, in another country, half a world away but so close to my soul... time stands still and the pictures move, the sounds come near and fade away... like a lone cloud in a clear sky and I am a bird soaring higher and higher... I have finally found you and I am consoled... I no longer search for you, no longer despair that we are separate because...

I am You... and You are me...

I feel your presence in so many ways, in so many things...

this life is but a wink of an eye,
this noisy world is only a day' s dream...

but we are  f o  r   e    v      e         r          .        .        .   

The scene in front looks inviting.. so inviting indeed, that one does not doubt the strength of the new found wings anymore.
With careful steps, one gingerly goes to the edge of the branch… and…

(.*_*.)

"There are no answers,
only choices.
May this answer find you!"