The Hyper-dimensional Pool

 

 
The hyper-dimensional swimming pool, a perfect sphere, suspended in the glittering black of space, yet an island of blues & greens & joy & light.

 

The kids jumping into the pool, I don’t know where they’re coming from, but there’s the blue sky & green grass right in the centre of the sphere.

It’s a archetype of the universe, folded in upon itself by some spooky physics, completely self-contained, with no awareness of the existence outside of it’s bounds, a prison where the prisoners are unaware of the bars.

 

They exist eternally, consciousnesses joyfully playing their play, no limitations enforced by physicality, such as need for food, or bound by needs such as shelter or struggle for resources.

 

And no one outside has ever seen them, until now. I am an observer who has peeked through the veil, a cosmic peeping tom observing the happenings of ‘people’ who probably wouldn’t consent to be observed like lab rats.

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The Joys of being a Digital Nomad

Who needs a corner office when you can work from here? 

 

A huge mass of dark clouds approaches. A few determined raindrops patter me & my phone occasionally. The smell of rain, wet mud & assorted forest foliage light up my olfactory nerve. A thin sliver of crimson underlines the clouds in the horizon, like a divine teacher has marked the evening with a perfect score in red ink.

I see clouds breaking against the mountains in the distant, finally winning & covering the peaks in a thick, heavy blanket.

I spent the day working, talking to people & connecting on LinkedIn.

I don’t think many people have an office quite like mine.

People like me who’ve grown up in the city have completely lost all sense of connection & appreciation for nature & I cannot underscore how lucky I am to have broken free of the urban nightmare. Maybe others will see the light as I have, most probably never will.

I spend most of my days experiencing exalted states of peace, joy & happiness. Nothing more that a city could offer could even come close to the quality of life I live now.

Come over to the light side. It’s nice over here.

This is the life.

 

 

 

On the nature of Solitude

 

Nofilter

 

After a month of being around other people, partying & socialising, coming back to solitude is both a relief & anxiety-provoking.

After my mind adjusted to the presence of people all around, that was where I felt most comfortable, with snatches of being alone while working or meditating.

I’m finding the readjustment process to solo life quite challenging. It’s interesting watching the anxiety & boredom rise up from my abdomen to my chest, and as I don’t give it fuel, just observing it passively, it is slowly released out of my system.

And yet, my most productive, most satisfying moments have all been spent in solitude: practicing guitar for 5 hours straight, sitting in the wilderness or looking at the sunset, spending hours on the beach alternately soaking in the sun & the surf, writing or producing music, working out outdoors, going for a solo run on the trails, immersed deeply in an exceptional book.

The one exception is when I’ve been with one or two other MALE friends, hiking in silence or tossing a frisbee back & forth on the beach.

Maybe another is when you’re engaged in a collective ‘trance’ state when at music festivals or at the cool club in town, everyone attuned & gyrating to the rhythmic carrier wave of the music.

It’s difficult to be in the flow state consistently when around others. It’s particularly difficult to do so around members of the opposite sex, no matter how enlightened you think you are, or even if you already have a partner. There’s always an underlying sexual tension, subtle as it may be, that’s surreptitiously pulling the strings of your actions & thoughts when you interact with members of the opposite sex.

Also impossible to be in flow is around people who talk a lot, & constantly force you to engage with them. These are the worst kind of people you can be around if you want to do any kind of thinking or creative or contemplative work. These people derive all their energy from external stimulus & attention, & will constantly look to you to charge up their own reserves.

These kind of extroverts are great to party with, not great to work with.

Add to this the neuroticism & restlessness that comes from living in the big cities & you have a recipe for disaster when spending extended time with your friends from the city.

Hermits living away from people, spending their days engaging in contemplation & meditation have always been looked upon as highest examples of human potential & development, venerated in almost all traditions around the world.

Take some time & space for yourself & find your own personal Walden. It just may be the best thing you’ll ever do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deja Vu experience & the Nature of Consciousness

My infinite number of selves

I’ve been having these deja vu moments since I got here. Fragments of reality looped into the infinite space-time continuum, which I tap into from time to time.

Wispy clouds of memories, events & interactions doomed to repeat for all eternity. Is that what we call ghosts or spirits?

Like the ghost in the machine, where random lines of code coming together to cause collisions of algorithms & if-then loops, give rise to unexpected  emergent behaviour.

Is that all that consciousness is? Localised manifestations of many simple lines of code that are defined by this Universe’s current laws of physics?

Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields which seem to guide collective specie behaviour come to mind.

Matrices of laws & rules governing our universe interact with each other, & the resulting interference pattern gives rise to the emergent “ghost in the machine” of consciousness.

As this singular consciousness interacts with the vibrations of the laws of physics, it refracts into the multiplicity of consciousnessess that make up all the plant & animal species on our planet, & probably even the rest of the universe.

It’s funny how we say there’s US, & the “rest of the Universe” , when we’re just one tiny infinitesimal part of the whole, & the entire annihilation of our planet would not even register as a significant event in the Universe.

Hostels, Love, Duality & Delhi girls

I came out into the dark of the courtyard for some cold air & space & to smoke a cigarette.

I was surprised to find other people who had had the same idea already staking out territories on the slate covered walkway, which gleamed dully like a singular trail in the forest determined to lead weary travellers in the right direction, in spite of themselves.

I found a nice patch of real estate between two couples, one on either side of me about ten feet away each.

It’s funny how territorial tendencies seem to show up in the least expected ways, even in a hostel like this where movement & energy & socialising is the norm, & private space is limited to your bed in the dorms.

The beds are a sacred space onto themselves here, a place of freedom & peace; bubbles of privacy where people don’t bother you if you look like you don’t want to be bothered.

That is where we go to recharge, regroup our mental energies & recoup our drained reserves.

So I’m standing here between these two couples & it just occurred to me how beautiful a representation of the nature of the world stood right in my immediate surroundings.

To my right, the couple was either arguing or performing a daily mating ritual, I’m not sure.

Sex & aggression are so closely related that at some point I find the distinction meaningless.

For those who’ve had the priceless privelege of having a lot of arguments with your partner, you will know that makeup sex is the best-thing-ever.

Angry, violent, desperate, primal, lustful lovemaking has an allure that can be an addictive release in a relationship that doesn’t have much else to hold it together.

So the couple to my right was arguing, with the girl railing at the guy for some imagined slight, & the one to my left was making out.

And the thing that occurred to me, as I held a lit malboro in my fingers, is this was the perfect representation of duality in nature, where the same thing can present either the Yin or the Yang aspects depending on conditions external to it.

The same relationship that had locked the couple to my left in a deep, semi-permanent embrace, seemed to be a source of infinite hassle to the other.

Out of politeness, & partly out of wanting to observe this insight into human nature a bit more fully, I stood there in my own little bubble, voyeuristically observing the bizarre scene playing out in front of me in this sleepy hamlet.

Finally, the lovely couple making out left, while the other girl continued her high pitched tirade directed at the left eardrum of her poor beau.

She was from Delhi, so I figured it’s business as usual for them.

 

Kunlun Chapter 6

The red stem glows in the fading light. Crickets & cicadas chirp in the depth of the woods.

One of the many elders trees in the forest angled dangerously on the steep slope. The top of the holy mountain was crowned by a silver grey mist. He looked wearily at the hidden peaks. He had a long way to travel, but little daylight left.

Yet, he could sense the still sacredness of the place. The shaman he had met along the mountain path, & who had accompanied him to the base of the holy mountain, had sensed his apprehension, & had advised him to keep climbing until he ran into one of the immortals.

The Kunluns did not give up their mysterious secrets to the merely curious or half-willing.

The mountain streams now were so cold that he worried his fingers would freeze & break off were he to cup that water in his hands.

His breath came out in plumes of white, sharp exhales accompanying his climb. Each breath was a ragged icy pain in his chest. Nevertheless, he was a strong man, & kept going, unmindful of his discomfort, forcing his mind to keep from wandering to what would happen a few hours from now, once it was dark.

A testament to his simple village upbringing & sincerity, he took the advice of the shaman to heart & kept climbing.

Only once he feared the dark would finally swallow him whole, he felt around in his hide bag & made a small torch from pitch & twisted twine. As soon as it was done, he lit it up & resumed his slow, stubborn march.

As cold as it was, he was pleased to see that the trees did not appear to thin out as he climbed higher. His exhausted brain did not make the realisation that it was a testament to the magical aura of the heights.

The trees provided shelter from the naked wind, & would be able to provide wood for a fire or to make a makeshift shelter for the night.

And yet he kept climbing. Alone, a pinpoint of flame betraying the presence of the only living soul in a vast expansive wilderness.

He started to see eyes & faces leering at him from the shadows, but which would disappear if he happened to turn his eyes towards them. He wondered whether it was a result of the cold & exhaustion or were they primal spirits that had taken up residence here.

His hallucinations got wilder, with snakes slithering in front of his feet, & hungry ghosts dragging their sad sorry selves around with no real aim.

Old, strangely glowing animal spirits accompanied his climb for short distances, always maintaining some distance, saying nothing, rarely even looking at him.

The very last one he remembered was a silver grey silhouette of a wolf, walking at just the edge of his circle of light. He could feel the pure primal aggression & an almost furious white-hot heat radiating from it, making him both glad for such a strong companion & also apprehensive of what it would do to him if it were simply inclined that way.

His village elders had often told the children stories of the ancestral animal spirits. He remembered one

cold winter afternoon

they were curled up in the house with his grandmother & she told them about the elder wolf spirit.

He remembered her admonition to treat ancestral & animal spirits with reverence & respect, with them being prone to anger & aggression, not because they were evil, because they were pure. Both sides of the polarity existed in nature, & these spirits, closely attuned to the energies of the natural world, reflected those attributes.

His mind forced back to the present moment all at once, he didn’t understand what caused it, but he could feel a tingle of apprehensive excitement vibrate through his spine.

He thought he saw a glimpse of dim orange in the woods in front of him. Brushing away the thought, he kept on trudging through the snow. His animal furs, which he had never had the chance to doubt would keep him warm, were starting to falter. Even through the thick layers, icy cold fingers of air crept stealthily in, robbing him of much needed warmth & the confidence that comes with being certain of being safely protected from the elements.

But then he saw it again, a shaky orange light barely visible through the trees.

His pace quickened.

Twilight Evenings in a Sleepy Indian Himalayan Village

The town seems to be winding down. Apart from the main chowk in the village, businesses were starting to shut shop & make their way home.

I could hear children being scolded for returning home late, dinner was a time for family & socialising.

I believe this is a tradition harkening back to our ancient hunter-gatherer roots, when nights were safest with your tribe & a fire blazing nearby. The days hunting & gathering would be prepared to make a feast as thanks for the fruit of the day’s toil.

The thousand bird calls of the morning were being replaced by sad mournful notes at the sun’s passing & the coming chill creeping down the slopes.

You could almost feel the energy of the place softening, slowing, ready to snuggle up under their blankets & duvets, and no joyless alarms to wake them in the mornings.

I could see the occasional headlights of the few taxis coming down the main town in the distance, ferrying stragglers & returning to their homes in the hills.

They glimmered like golden beads running down a snakes back, evoking comparisons with kundalini, often described using the metaphor of a snake.

Feminine laughter echoed through the air, no doubt from one of the travellers in one of the many invisible cafes which spocked the slope above me.

But the highest point in any village was always the temple. Small cement boxes with a red, sloping roof, with a flag planted on top.

This one had many.

The ones that I did manage to get to were invariably about a devi or Goddess, with an image of Shiva & adornments by the side. And each of these small cement boxes had an air of purity & holiness that I’ve seldom found in much more venerated places of worship, no matter the denomination or faith.

The chill grew sharper, & the hills got quieter. This fascinating correlation between temperature & activity is something I’ve observed my entire life in different places I’ve stayed in.

It’s like nature is telling you to rest & lie down & sleep, and like a patient but strict parent, first gently nudges, then demands that you acquiesce, until you have no choice in the matter, & unwillingly embrace the warmth of your covers, then sleepily muse why you resisted this idea in the first place.