Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Words are the choreography of dreams

WE HAVE MEMORIES THAT WE DO NOT TRUST; MEMORIES OF MISTS THAT HANG OVER THE OCEANS OF SHORELESS LIGHT


"The lover always knows best, always has more insight than the combined wisdom of the saint and the scientist because his knowledge is based neither on dead detail nor on mere perspective. But respect a saint whose religion is love -- a Meera, a Nanak, a Jesus , a Gautam , a Mansoor. They have known love as we have known love but, unlike us, they have also known what lies beyond love. Beyond love lies a bliss to which only love provides access."

Words always romance a dream and they dance to the choreography of mind of a writer and his reader alike. Words are like children, born of mother but playing their childhood out with father. You are as much a part of dance as the dancer is . And a hand, like the one that sent out un-ending reams of cloth to a Draupadi in distress, always sends out invisible commands on tendrils of light and energy to the dancer and the writer. The same tendrils connect a writer and his reader, and a dancer and his inspiration, a flute and its tune, a Meera and her muse. We are all little ponds of glow that have broken away from an ocean of shoreless light. And we have memories that we do not trust, memories of a mist that overhangs these shoreless oceans. Our breaking away from those oceans must been wrapped in some mysterious pain. The pain of breaking away or the sharper pain of internminable separation becomes an urge for re-uniting; that urge is the force of gravitation that pulls everything towards everything else, and everything to the centre of the universe. (Quite another matter though that no one knows where the center is, and also that the centre is where you happen to be standing at any point of time.) The whole universe is a mere play of that urge of fragments to reunite. Call it gravitation, energy or force, or what you will. That awesome urge can not contain itself and therfore keeps breaking itself up into parts, a full-glorious playboy at Brij Dham and a sublime Meera drunk on high romance being just two of those fragments. They yearn to merge back into each other and then together into the vast ocean of light from where they emerged, and then sink to its center, there to swim blissfully for ever, till another breaking up sends them out on a new sojourn of discovery of what they already know. Life and the whole existence, this whole universe that we see or the energy that we do not see --all this is a mere montage of yearning taking diferent forms , an endless yearning expressing itself in countless and countless forms. That gives the whole self-contained panorama an appearance of motion whereas , at the heart of this motion, is peace and stillness -- peace, not death-like but peace that is pulsating and happening -- because things are moving as much away from the centre of the universe as into it. Every scientist who has observed this universe will tell you this, and every saint who has had a vision of vastness of life will tell you this too. But anyone who has ever been in love needs no saint or scientist to come and tell him or her this. The lover always knows best, always has more insight than the combined wisdom of the saint and the scientist because his knowledge is based neither on dead detail nor on mere perspective. But respect a saint whose religion is love -- a Meera, a Nanak, a Jesus , a Gautam , a Mansoor. They have known love as we have known love but, unlike us, they have also known what lies beyond love. Beyond love lies a bliss to which only love provides access. The pangs of love are sacred; even more sacred is the bliss that flows from understanding which only love can bring. Blessed are the blind who can love without wanting to be loved back. Blessed are the blind because only they know that it is not necessary to know someone in order to fall in love; it is necessary to love someone in order to know someone. But even knowing someone is not the reason we fall in love. The only reason to fall in love is to fall in love -- as if there could indeed be any other reason for losing yourself into so noble and divine an experience of living as only love can give us ! Love is proud to be irrational, proud to smile at the petty vanity of reason. Love knows no reason, or needs to know none.
The dance and the divinity of words flow from the vision of one who is willing to be blind in love. Those who insist on seeing, on ‘checking it out’ can not be lovers; they can at best be traders who must have the value of their goods exceed or at least equal the price they pay for it. Love cares not for the price tag, for it is willing to stake all without wanting to take all. Love’s candle feeds on love; the more it burns the more it illumines, and the more it illumines, the more it renews itself. The candle of love feeds on its own light; more the burning, greater the light, and longer its life. A loveless heart knows neither light nor joy nor the dignity of pain, while a lover’s heart seeks out pain, and in doing so conquers pain. In conquering pain, it enters the realm of bliss which those afraid of pain dare not hope for. Do not enter the kingdom of love if you are not willing to pay its taxes – I said it before and say it again and will say a million times again – but do not pay love's taxes if you are seeking royal favours out of doing that. Pay taxes anyway, and you will have peace and you will have bliss.
The candle of love feeds on its own light; more the burning, greater the light, and longer its life.

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