Day 1 .....15th Aug 2015.

 At 0500 IST , the new day dawns in Coimbatore. As India steps into another glorious year of independence, determined once again to unshackle itself and realize its amazingly massive potential, to trust and flourish in the rich culture and heritage of this land while nimbly balancing modernity and progress, I set out on my own tiny journey to unshackle myself from my current limited perspective.  

The day is here, when I set out from home in Coimbatore to Mt Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. 

In the larger perspective, I wonder when this journey really started.How many lifetimes ago? From which place in the universe? While in the immediate more physical perspective it appears as if the journey starts today and from here, the reality may not be what I am able to see or perceive. The human mind loves to cling on to what it sees and knows. It is oblivious to what it does not sense, yet. But in that void of ignorance lies the bliss of the beyond. Only when I dare to be open to that abyss of ignorance will I expand. Else I would be comfortable within the familiar , within the limits of my knowing as it is today.

In a white piece of paper if a small dot is present, my sense gets drawn to the dot. Missing the larger and much wider expanse of white emptiness, in which the black dot is tiny and insignificant . The mind again tends to cling to what it sees but remains blind to what it does not see !!

I exist in the emptiness, all that we see, exists in this emptiness. Then what is this emptiness? What is this "Shoonya"? And what is beyond the shoonya?   In Sadhguru's words......

In Yoga, existence is divided into into four parts: Sthoola, Sukshma, Shoonya, Shiva. 

Sthoola means the gross existence. Physicality is sthoola. Everything that you can sense through five sense organs, everything that you can see, smell, taste, hear and touch is considered sthoola. It can be analysed with your intellect and understood and grasped. The building block of existence is an atom, and if it is made of an atom, once enough atoms are there, we can touch, smell, taste, and see it. 

But if it goes beyond the perception of the five senses and it is still physical in nature, we call it sukshma.When you enter into sukshma, it is still physical, but do what you want, you cannot grasp that dimension through the five senses, nor can you analyse it through your intellect. If you are able to perceive that dimension, we call it visheshagnan. That means an extra-ordinary knowledge. Gnana means knowledge; visheshagnan is extra-ordinary or significant knowledge. So visheshgnan is referred to as vigyan.The word vigyan means that you are able to perceive those dimensions which cannot be perceived through five senses.

If you go even further, it will become shoonya. That means absolute emptiness. There is no physicality. Where there is no physicality, your sense organs and intellect will become absolutely useless.

If you go beyond shoonya, there is that which we refer to as Shiva. As I mentioned before, Shiva means that which is not. If you touch “that which is not,” we have always seen, it is non-physical in nature. Non-physical in nature means it does not exist, but it is opaque. How can that be? It is not in the realm of our logical mind.

Today, modern science believes that whole existence has to oblige to human logic, which is a very limited way of approaching life. We think we can fit the whole existence into our head. No, existence will never fit into our head. Our logic can analyse the physicality of existence. But once we cross the physical dimension, our logic is completely out of its realm.
Science has its value in terms of utility, but science cannot open up the existence for human experience. It will not, it can never do it because they are going with intellect. Intellect as an instrument works only to dissect. The only way intellect can approach anything is to break it up and see. If you ask a scientist to find out something about a flower for example, the first thing is he will break it up into pieces. If you break up the flower, you may know many parts of it, you may know the structure and chemistry of it, but you will not know the beauty of it; you will not know the completeness of it because the flower is an expression of a plant finding its fulfillment. It is the highest thing for the plant, the flowering of that life. You will not see the hand of the creator in this if you break it. But as a whole, if you are willing to pay absolute attention, if in your approach, you make this flower more important than yourself and keep your focus on it, you will see the whole universe in this.

If we try to understand the universe by going into the cosmos, knowing full well it is immeasurable, then it is going to be untenable. In this culture, we took another route. That is, this little piece of life – the human being – is made the same way as the cosmos, from the same principles of existence, the same principles of creation. If you observe this closely enough, if you internalise your observation rather than observing the outer, you will know how a human being happened. Once you know how this happened, by inference you know how everything happened.

Whether you call it physics or spirituality, both of them are seeking the same thing. One is trying to explore the outside and know it. Another is exploring the inward, because it is more at hand. That scientists are willing to spend billions of dollars just to know something is a lot like spirituality. Right now there is no technological use, but they are willing to spend billions of dollars and decades just to know something. That sounds spiritual to me, but it usually does not cost that much!

If you know the full depths and dimension of what it means to be human, then you know everything that is happening out there. If you want to know what created this cosmos, do you have means to travel to whatever you think is the center of this cosmos and find out? You do not even know where it begins, where it ends, where the centre is. It is an endless pursuit. But this human being is just a reflection of the whole creation. We cannot separate the creation and the Creator. In the same image as the creation, is the Creator.

So I embrace this emptiness and jump headlong into the abyss of ignorance. I guess there needs to be a lot of wisdom in just recognizing the ignorance !!  Therein lies the beauty and the mystery.

And rightfully so, even at this time I am not aware of the assembly point (whom , when and where) at Chennai airport, which flight will take me out of Chennai to Kathmandu on Sunday morning….. Usually each our trips is planned to such fine detail and the human mind sought comfort in that familiarity of an itinerary, of a plan... And today I step out of the so-called familiar comforts of the "home" and into the void of the larger HOME, certain that while I do not have a plan , there is a LARGER PLAN out there... With that trust and faith... I shall step out and be willing and open to let that void seep into me. 

I already exist in that void, It already embraces me. It is just that I still do not have a realization of the emptiness that I exist in. Onward towards that which is not ... towards shi-va.... Shambho !!!