Dear All,
Most of the time, we all act sane and "normal" by not talking about Life, the nature of our existence on earth etc. We stay focused on our daily routines, work, family, activism etc. But today, 23 hours before the New Year begins, I'm going to briefly break away from my normal-ness and share with you a conversation that I recently had with a friend about how we relate to the world.
Sometimes, at the turning points of our lives -- such as births, deaths, loss of job, miraculous escapes -- we find ourselves pondering, thinking thoughts such as the ones below.
Our daily experience tells us that the world is a mixture of random happenings and reasoned actions. For instance, getting to office on time, before our boss reaches office in the morning, depends on:
(a) Our reasoned actions: our waking up and getting ready early in the morning
(b) random happenings related to us: timely availability of rickshaws, buses and trains – largely predictable with error margins of 10 minutes
(c) totally random happenings related to us: e.g. an accident between someone else's vehicles at the traffic signal that causes traffic jam, delaying us by a hour
(d) reasoned and random happenings related to others: Boss missed his early-morning flight from Chennai due to a similar combinations of reasons, enabling us to get to office ahead of him despite our being an hour late.
Our lives appear to be an endless, meaningless sequence of such events. So where is scope for God's Will or Destiny? And yet, we see and experience patterns in everybody's lives, including ours. We experience Individual Will as the predominant shaping force, but in some cases, we see the dice rolling in favour of some people, and we suspect that the game is 'rigged' i.e. predestined, or subjected to an invisible Will that seemingly controls elements a, b, c and d mentioned above. And sometimes, we also feel that the world is responding positively or negatively to our thoughts, desires and fears.
Are these illusions, tricks of the mind? Are we seeing patterns where none exist – a bit like seeing pictures of strange creatures in the cracks of our walls? Are we seeing these because our brain is hardwired by evolution to see patterns where none exist?
How does the world really work? Is it the sum-total of totally random happenings and our actions? Or does the world respond at a deeper level to our deepest desires? Is it partially responsive to us? Can we shape our lives, or are we just supposed to somehow make do with whatever falls into our plate by accident? Is this a 'moral' world, where those who do what is 'approved by God' get rewarded, and the others get ignored or punished? Or is this a 'practical' world, where those who are clever and quick get what the desire, while those who are less competent and less competitive are left to make do with the crumbs?
THESE ARE NOT MERELY ACADEMIC QUESTIONS. They have a very real bearing on how we live and relate to other people and to the world. Depending on how we answer these questions, we relate to others in competitive or cooperative ways, in ethical or practical ways, in various degrees.
Have we been cast out into a big bad world, to cope as best as we can? Or are we well connected, living amidst old friends, family, mentors and inherited 'wealth'? Is life really a process of getting back with old friends wearing new faces, and drawing on resources that are there for us, waiting to be used?
Do our desires and inner stirrings have meanings, or are they just a lot of 'radio static' and 'noise' that we must learn to ignore? What if these impulses are running counter to our social/familial reality? Do we have to manage our psychologies, impulses and perceptions with drugs and counseling, because they are 'anti-social' and 'disruptive'? Or, alternatively, must we use those impulses and perceptions as tools to reshape the outer reality, and make it a more favourable reality that gives our inner world room to breathe and express itself?
And, if we set out to reshape the world, what happens next? Past experience tells us to be cautious; attempts by individuals to reshape the world are sometimes met with harsh practical consequences. How to cope? What to expect?
Are we alone in this battle, or can we expect 'outside help' from some agency? Assuming for the moment that it is real and not illusory, how to connect to that agency, and trigger that agency into action? How and when to place a call? What kind of calls will the agency not accept? Pulse dialing or tone dialing? What is your 'consumer code'? What is the realistic extent of help that one may hope for? In what form does help arrive? Does it wear a 'uniform' that enable us to distinguish it from false hopes? What emotional state must we clothe ourselves in when we are availing of such help?
In other words, what is prayer and what is not prayer? Is it a free service or is there a payment? If payment is required, how and when to pay? What currency is acceptable? Do I have that much in my account?
What is our side of the bargain? Or, shift from the 'agency' analogy to a 'relationship' analogy, what is our side of the relationship? Is our relationship with the agency currently dysfunctional? What is needed to revive the relationship and make it a workable relationship?
I have no authoritative answers to all of the above, but here is what I believe -- a theory told to me by my father, an economic journalist who rarely talks about religion and spiritualism, but devoutly prays everyday.
The Three Graces: Aatma-krupa, Guru-krupa and Daiva-krupa
THE KARMIC THEORY OF THE THREE GRACES, OR KRUPAS, is for me a practical guide to living. The state of grace is when things work out, giving rise to contentment, growth and positive energy.
AATMA KRUPA: The first step is the grace of the soul, or of the self. For positive changes of any kind to happen in your life, you must feel an awakening, a yearning, a hunger, an impulse of sufficient strength and tenacity. This hunger cannot be given by any external agency, it comes from deep within. It manifests as discontentment and an urge to change what is currently there.
A primal example: You and I and everyone else alive owes his/her existence to one thing – one of several million sperms had the simple will and tenacity to start swimming, wriggling, fighting and jostling, and keep at it till it attained its goal – to burrow into the egg in the womb. Sperms have no brain, only impulse and tenacity. If a certain sperm had 0.01% less of this, you might not have been alive, and in your place, it would have been someone else. That is aatma krupa – the grace of impulse, vigour or stamina which arises from within.
However, there may have been a few thousand other sperms with equal or even superior vigour. But here you are, alive and manifested, while they went down the drain. So how did that happen? It happened because of other graces or krupas.
GURU KRUPA: The impulse manifesting from aatma krupa needs to be guided at every twist and turn along the way. The impulse itself has no direction, only vigour. The directions come from within as well as from a number of external agencies.
Example: A person who wants to set out on the journey of a thousand miles has only intention, no direction. Until he/she sets foot outside her house, she has no guides. But if she boldly sets out, she will find other travelers whom she can ask for directions. She will see milestones, books, travel-guides, and maybe even a companion who is going to the same destination. She will however find a mixture of right guidance, wrong guidance, untimely guidance, dangers etc. She can become distracted and end up in the wrong place, she can stay at the wrong hotel and be robbed and waylaid. She may give in to exhaustion or become discouraged. So many millions of different things can happen on the way! So she needs to get the right guidance at each step of the way. That is guru krupa – the knowhow to guide the impulse.
Primal example: The sperm that is currently you must have blindly twisted and turned thousands of times in response to folds of tissue, jostling from competitors/cooperators and small movements of your mother's body. It must have been guided, both internally and externally. All of that turned out to be the right way – the way to life.
DAIVA KRUPA: A person who has sufficiently vigourous impulses and willingness, and is rightly guided, still needs circumstances to collaborate with him. The overall environment or context of his actions needs to be in tune with him; only then will his actions fructify. The gods, so to speak, must favour him.
Example: The traveler on her thousand-mile journey sometimes gets unexpected good fortune. She finds the right buses and trains almost waiting for her; the moment she boards, they set off. She finds people standing at strategic points to remove the biggest obstacles on the way. Alternatively, she finds the going tough every inch of the way; the soles of her shoes come off, she loses her purse and her mobile, her vehicle gets into accidents, she gets caught in a thunderstorm… That is daiva-krupa or the lack of it.
Primal example: Many of the competitive sperms who would have been in your place must have seen victory snatched from their grasp. You were blessed with life, they were not. The gods smiled on your efforts, forgave the mistakes and wrong turns your must have made, and favoured you with life.
OVERVIEW: All of this is karmic. Karma is playing out every step of the way – your karma and everybody else's.
AND WHAT IS PRAYER?
Prayer means different things in different contexts. In the context of a religious ceremony or ritual, prayer is a formality. But in the context of life, prayer means different things to different people, based on their own personality.
For me personally, prayer means acting out my deepest intentions. Most people have an opinion on everything that goes on. They opine that there should be world peace, and they "pray for world peace". In the same way, they opine that they should be happier and more contented, and then they pray for that also. I believe that's not prayer; that's wishful thinking.
The prayer of a sperm is to wiggle and slither. The prayer of a street dog is to find food and fight each day to defend its territory. The prayer of a bachelor woman who needs a man in her life is to plan and plot and seduce and find such a man. The prayer of a man who wants to achieve riches and fame is to go out there and seek opportunities, and take risks.
And if one really wants world peace, he/she goes out there and chips away at what he perceives as obstacles to world peace; he does not sit in his lounge-chair and pray, he does his best and sleeps contented that he has done something in that direction. That's prayer. That's the sort of prayer that starts awakening the universe.
However, there's more to prayer. I think all of us sometimes pollute our prayers with ego-thinking and a feeling of separateness. If we avoid doing this, and if we feel -- really feel -- connected to the All, then each one of us is CONNECTED. Then each breath and each thought becomes a prayer. That's the sort of prayer that the universe gravitates to and starts revolving around. That's when our prayer becomes literally connected to real life, and starts manifesting in everyday happenings.
And so, I wish you all a very happy and fulfilling 2011. I wish more power to your prayers. I wish more 'krupa', grace and connection in all our lives.
Krish the guru-type guy ;-)
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