Thoughts on Spiritual Wisdom
Yesterday, I was talking to my friend… one of my closest friend.
Saurabh Dwivedy is one of the most talented human beings I have ever met or hope to meet, in future. And yet he is an epitome of underachievement. He was most well poised among us all, to make it to the hallowed portals of IITs- but he couldn’t. He had the most promising future- which he couldn’t actualize. He could had easily made it to any of the IIMs- but he didn’t ever try. He himself is to be blamed for this great waste of talent… with a dose of ill luck.
Talent is not a gift, it’s a responsibility- a very dangerous responsibilities… that needs to be actualized… it is a double edged sword, which if not actualized- backfires… kills your self confidence and self worth. I have often seen… people with normal dose of talent and ability succeeding in life… lack of talent actually is a virtue and not the other way round.
We were planning to take a 10 days off from our schedules and go for a vacation somewhere… crystallize our thoughts on future and things that matter to us. He told me that he wanted to go to Auroville in Pondicherry and Kailash Mansarovar.
A word about the two places.
Auroville is an ashram based on the philosophy and teachings of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. A township, dedicated to humanity, it has inhabitants from all over the world… living in a peaceful harmony. I went there in 2003, and visited the township… I stayed there for about 3-4 hours… and that is a very little time to form any opinion about the place. So rather than being judgemental, I would plainly state that from whatever little interaction I had over there, I found the place to be quite elitist. And I didn’t had any spiritual experience of any sorts, over there.
Kailash Mansarovar is in Tibet. If Hindus were to deconstruct the mythology around their religion and point out 3-4 most sacred places in their religion… then Kailash Mansarovar will be up there with Varanasi. It is the abode of Lord Shiva. The route to Kailash Mansarovar, however, is arduous. One has to go through a series of landslide prone zones, flash flood prone areas and two week long difficult trek to reach there. There are other easy routes to the place, but due to lack of trust between the Indian and the Chinese government… they are not being opened for the Indian pilgrims. For a more gentle way of reaching Kailash Mansarovar… one should head to Nepal and can do a Jeep trek to the place.
Saurabh said that he wants to go to these places for spiritual reasons. Personally for me, an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, Kailash Mansarovar is the ultimate Shangri-La of wandering… reaching there would be like reaching the laps of my benevolent father, my God. But it can wait… till I complete my worldly duties.
While chatting, I said something very profound… which set me thinking… I said- you need not go to these places to have an spiritual experience… India is replete with places where one can have spiritual experience… in fact the spiritual wisdom is scattered all over our civilization. And that I had my most enduring and endearing spiritual experiences in small villages and hamlets… where I knew nobody and nobody knew me… and yet they loved me for what I was, just a weary traveler wandering aimlessly.
And for this very reason… India is unlike any other country.
I still remember all those experiences very vividly...
I still remember, when I was in Somnath- during the darkest hour of my life… and a man came to me out of the blue and told me- Don’t worry, God is with you- and then was never to be seen. Before the Somnath experience… I was a non-believer… part Marxist, part Buddhist. But after that Lord Shiva has always been with me… in my heart and my prayers.
I still remember while trekking downhill from Bhimashankar… I saw a place called Nagphani point and strange looking caves… it was a rainy morning, the trek was difficult, slippery, lonely and dangerous… and yet I trekked towards it- I saw the caves and the magnificent views from the Nagphani point… and while coming down I lost my way… I was at my wits end and suddenly I saw a hermit coming from nowhere… he guided me to a place to the dirt track and then vanished behind some bushes… never to be seen again.
I remember when I was going on a bus from Dapoli to Dabhol… I was very sleepy… and accidentally I put my weary head over the shoulders of an old woman. And she, like my mother, sat still, all the while to let me have a good sleep. When I woke up… I saw in her, a strange resemblance to my mother.
Or the time when I met Rohidas Gaekwad in a place where I could had least expected to meet a person like him… or that night spent in the confines of Gangadevasthanam.
All these experience (and lot more) can be explained by theory of coincidences and auto-suggestion. No amount of logic can explain these experiences… it has to be some kind of coincidence of self suggestion. I saw what I wanted to see. But spiritual experiences have their own patterns… they help you, guide you, and show their being ness… when you least expect them.
Whenever somebody comes to me and shares his state of despair… I always tell him to pack his bags and go and spend a week in small villages, hamlets… they are the repository of the spiritual wisdom that our civilization has gathered over last 5000 years of existence… they have the ability to show us the way; they have the ability to initiate us into the realms of self-exploration. And no amount of pilgrimage, spiritual tour and meditation will ever be able to replace it.
And some times, I think that it is not unusual for India… I have had my best experiences in Syria in a small village near Aleppo in Syria- in a village house having figs and tea with a group of small kids… or in Al Qasr village in Egypt…
My friend needs that bout of rejuvenation… ability to look deeper into life and its meaning… may be my therapy works for him… I hope it does… Inshallah.
Saurabh Dwivedy is one of the most talented human beings I have ever met or hope to meet, in future. And yet he is an epitome of underachievement. He was most well poised among us all, to make it to the hallowed portals of IITs- but he couldn’t. He had the most promising future- which he couldn’t actualize. He could had easily made it to any of the IIMs- but he didn’t ever try. He himself is to be blamed for this great waste of talent… with a dose of ill luck.
Talent is not a gift, it’s a responsibility- a very dangerous responsibilities… that needs to be actualized… it is a double edged sword, which if not actualized- backfires… kills your self confidence and self worth. I have often seen… people with normal dose of talent and ability succeeding in life… lack of talent actually is a virtue and not the other way round.
We were planning to take a 10 days off from our schedules and go for a vacation somewhere… crystallize our thoughts on future and things that matter to us. He told me that he wanted to go to Auroville in Pondicherry and Kailash Mansarovar.
A word about the two places.
Auroville is an ashram based on the philosophy and teachings of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. A township, dedicated to humanity, it has inhabitants from all over the world… living in a peaceful harmony. I went there in 2003, and visited the township… I stayed there for about 3-4 hours… and that is a very little time to form any opinion about the place. So rather than being judgemental, I would plainly state that from whatever little interaction I had over there, I found the place to be quite elitist. And I didn’t had any spiritual experience of any sorts, over there.
Kailash Mansarovar is in Tibet. If Hindus were to deconstruct the mythology around their religion and point out 3-4 most sacred places in their religion… then Kailash Mansarovar will be up there with Varanasi. It is the abode of Lord Shiva. The route to Kailash Mansarovar, however, is arduous. One has to go through a series of landslide prone zones, flash flood prone areas and two week long difficult trek to reach there. There are other easy routes to the place, but due to lack of trust between the Indian and the Chinese government… they are not being opened for the Indian pilgrims. For a more gentle way of reaching Kailash Mansarovar… one should head to Nepal and can do a Jeep trek to the place.
Saurabh said that he wants to go to these places for spiritual reasons. Personally for me, an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, Kailash Mansarovar is the ultimate Shangri-La of wandering… reaching there would be like reaching the laps of my benevolent father, my God. But it can wait… till I complete my worldly duties.
While chatting, I said something very profound… which set me thinking… I said- you need not go to these places to have an spiritual experience… India is replete with places where one can have spiritual experience… in fact the spiritual wisdom is scattered all over our civilization. And that I had my most enduring and endearing spiritual experiences in small villages and hamlets… where I knew nobody and nobody knew me… and yet they loved me for what I was, just a weary traveler wandering aimlessly.
And for this very reason… India is unlike any other country.
I still remember all those experiences very vividly...
I still remember, when I was in Somnath- during the darkest hour of my life… and a man came to me out of the blue and told me- Don’t worry, God is with you- and then was never to be seen. Before the Somnath experience… I was a non-believer… part Marxist, part Buddhist. But after that Lord Shiva has always been with me… in my heart and my prayers.
I still remember while trekking downhill from Bhimashankar… I saw a place called Nagphani point and strange looking caves… it was a rainy morning, the trek was difficult, slippery, lonely and dangerous… and yet I trekked towards it- I saw the caves and the magnificent views from the Nagphani point… and while coming down I lost my way… I was at my wits end and suddenly I saw a hermit coming from nowhere… he guided me to a place to the dirt track and then vanished behind some bushes… never to be seen again.
I remember when I was going on a bus from Dapoli to Dabhol… I was very sleepy… and accidentally I put my weary head over the shoulders of an old woman. And she, like my mother, sat still, all the while to let me have a good sleep. When I woke up… I saw in her, a strange resemblance to my mother.
Or the time when I met Rohidas Gaekwad in a place where I could had least expected to meet a person like him… or that night spent in the confines of Gangadevasthanam.
All these experience (and lot more) can be explained by theory of coincidences and auto-suggestion. No amount of logic can explain these experiences… it has to be some kind of coincidence of self suggestion. I saw what I wanted to see. But spiritual experiences have their own patterns… they help you, guide you, and show their being ness… when you least expect them.
Whenever somebody comes to me and shares his state of despair… I always tell him to pack his bags and go and spend a week in small villages, hamlets… they are the repository of the spiritual wisdom that our civilization has gathered over last 5000 years of existence… they have the ability to show us the way; they have the ability to initiate us into the realms of self-exploration. And no amount of pilgrimage, spiritual tour and meditation will ever be able to replace it.
And some times, I think that it is not unusual for India… I have had my best experiences in Syria in a small village near Aleppo in Syria- in a village house having figs and tea with a group of small kids… or in Al Qasr village in Egypt…
My friend needs that bout of rejuvenation… ability to look deeper into life and its meaning… may be my therapy works for him… I hope it does… Inshallah.
1 comment:
Reached this post looking for Rohidas G., but then its mention of Dube made me senti ... :(, and as I was thinking of him (mainly on the lines of what u wrote in the posts and I have to agree with a heavy heart), remembered this orkut testimonial I wrote on him (He has deleted that account of his, but got a copy from my gmail). Here it goes:
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Dube is, the only one among my contemporaries, who has been my ideal, and for a long time, and this long time ended only when I realized that shadkam islam can never become saurabh dwivedy :).
Throughout my college years, I wanted to become just like him, a terrific orator, and a wizard of writing (he was editor in chief of our student magazine at IIT, this being one among many, many of his accomplishments), mature beyond his years, so much so that sometimes his views / comments reminded me those of my Dad, exceptionally good at singing (I still remember the 3 songs he recorded with original sound track and people could not make out that they were not original songs. He became music section secretary in IIIrd yr itself, which people, even talented ones, had to try hard for, even in the fourth year, and even after indulging in dirty politics. The next year, he was selected to be the literary section secretary.
The rarity and wonderfulness of Dube's personality lies in not only his talent (which, though undoubtedly immense, could be matched by a couple of others at the campus too), but in his humility, his humbleness ... I have lived a significant portion of my life already, but I have not seen a combination of such extreme talent, and such a down to earth humbleness ... I mean, I have seen people more humble than Dube, but somehow those humblenesses made themselves felt ... not in Dube's case ... which was like ... say Amol Palekar's acting, so so very natural ...
He was the only person at IIT, whom people as different as GRE/CAT toppers, and people who could not utter a word of english, people whose Dads earned (and they spent) in Dollars, and people who had only one warm cloth for the entire winter, state level singers, city level Dons, people who were Who's who of IIT, and people who just managed to exist there, felt equally comfortable & enjoyable talking to, being with.
I am a jealous person, and naturally I wanted to score marks more than others, do better than anybody else in life. Dube was (and remains) one of the few people whom I genuinely wanted (and prayed for) to do better than me ... That shows how genuinely good a human being he is (Ajatshatru ?), even a jealous person, like me could not feel competitive towards him ...
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ps: bhai rohidas ka links post kar do 225th post ke comments me .. mere jaise logon ko suvidha ho jaye gi :), dhoond nahi paaya main ... (a couple of weeks back, had to buy gift for a cousin's infant, couldn't find any toy shop in Atta, then someone suggested to go to GIP, cudn't find any toy/gift shop over there too, then someone suggested Big Bazar in GIP, and guess what, after looking for it for ~20 minutes, could not even find Big Bazar :) ... this when i live just one signal away from GIP .. :) .. )
So, old world folks like me too read ur blogs - links vinks de diya karo bhai :)
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