Sehaj Swabhav: RAJIV MUDGIL
Today at 7:50am
I banished God a long time ago. All his angels, fallen and upright left with him. I put away all scriptures and philosophies: saints and prophets moved away from my vicinity many years ago. I have no quarrel with God or any of his emissaries or followers. There is no vanity in what I say. It is a mere statement of fact spoken in humility which is the natural state of human existence. Not because the human race is a fallen progeny nor because it occupies but a miniscule place in the grandeur of the universe. It is because, in a state where there is no comparison, no one to compare with, vanity is impossible; only pure existence which neither denigrates nor embellishes itself.
Why should I seek to understand God, universe, my own self, pain, pleasure, prayer or devotion? Shall I construct and deconstruct with my intellect, create word monuments which now crumble and now rise on truths, half truths and falsehoods which serve but themselves. I have no questions, so what shall I seek answers to? Who shall I pray to and for what? I have all I need and cherish and there is no one out there who can grant or withdraw. Shall I describe the face of pain? I’ll know him when he enters my house uninvited. But when he is here, we’ll live together in this house and I will listen to his heart throbbing in my temples and lie down with him. Pleasure is my housemate. He is quiet and unobtrusive but fills my spirit with his body odour. The winds of autumn will rustle up dry leaves into the rosebush with little buds and the cherry and apple trees will soon blossom.
This is the natural state of the human spirit. It is not an object of wonder. The wonder is that most humans don’t consciously live it.
“Tum mere paas hote ho goya,
Jab koyee doosra nahin hota” - Momin
It is ‘sehaj swabhav’ whose quiet peace is being drowned out by the energetic but fruitless noise of intellect which fears empty space and constructs wordscrapers forever taller than others.
I do not crave “anhad naad” because when my cat snuggles up to me and purrs with pleasure as I stroke it, it touches my spirit with soothing pleasure. In the morning, when I prepare fruit for my daughter, the pale pineapple, the orange mango, the red strawberries, the green kiwis, the blueberries in the plate are a thousand times richer than the clearest rainbow because I adorn my daughter’s food with love which will sustain her.
Thoreau wrote,
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.
And, this from Emily Dickinson,
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled
HARCHARAN BAINS : TODAY 7.25 PM
I PREFER TO PLAY THE GIRL-CHILD
I continue to love God; I love all myths and all play things. I see no God I can banish, except as the little childhood playmate whom I would rather humour than dispense with. To banish God would need having a God to banish as anything more than a myth. And to presume God and my own existence as more real than a fleeting shadow play would be a forceful act of vanity. And then, as I said, God and I have a vested stake in each other's myth. I safeguard his and I get him to safeguard mine. Its a stake I have created . And I ahve constructed beautiful figures I call prophets and saints, and they follow me wherever I go. You are one of them . They have no choice becasue I have invested them with love, and love has to follow its creator. I have created myths much, much larger than anything I know, but thats the only way to live this life. A life bereft of myths is a drab tale, not for me. Call it a mock exercise, but the day He comes alongwith prophets and saints to seek help at my door, I will most probably give it, becasue I have something so large to give that only a myth can receive it. I look at my own eixstence also as a myth, a beautiful, absorbing myth whose reality is only as tangible as God's . Nevertheless, I prefer to play the child-girl and play with dolls, taking them for real. Its such a wonderful life and such a wonderful feeling. Your cat and my myths purr the same song.
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