The Issue of Familiarity

Deja Vu

I was watching an American movie recently … something about making deals and high finance. It had a gripping account of the way an individual thinks in that sort of environment … even stepping out spontaneously into areas he never made any notes on. It was as if the human mind and body contained a secret store of knowledge about things we haven't encountered personally. Then again it could have been simply Hollywood magic.

But it raised the loathsome question of whether intelligence is naturally existing in an individual or does a person rely on an academic tradition to help him cope? I fear I believed it myself as a young man … owing to the way I made an impression with people and perhaps thought that tiny gnomes in my passions and mind were doing my bid and call … helping me to logically derive issues or account for their probability in some very accurate way. In consequence therefore I always avoided making notes.

Then it hit me … and in a state of consternation I came to discover that the ' gnomes ' I referred to were actual people from around the world! Reincarnation? … my former lives? … Yogamaya? … the convoluted specter of Indic traditional teachings rose like an ancient idolatry of causes and braised me for neglecting them in the face of my new interests in science and academia. So … I relented and stepped into the incense filled chants of the Indic conservatory of self taught knowledge of life … with the bearing of a prodigal son.

The experience is a little difficult for most Indic folks today accustomed to denim jeans, rock and roll music, McDonald's, Toyotas, American slang, walkman, internet, cell phones and pin-ups of Rita Hayworth. But when I put the two together it worked like a charm. I was helped in the process by someone resembling an adolescent kid from the Brit Celts. Then there was the Saracen youth from the middle-east, the cowboy, the samurai from Japan, several tribal types and so forth. I wouldn't swear to this … even today … but I would say it formed part of a strange familiarity about the world in the mind of a young man unafraid to say it the way it is.

In such a company … and in the companionship of considerable sharing that took place with regards to knowledge … quite often intrinsic and passion based … I was left groping for my place in such a company. I dashed to bring my Indic studies to date with what everyone else was on about in these times. So does intelligence exists in that way … innate and wondrous … in the mind of a person? Only in someone unfamiliar with the way a man is organized in the pathology of his perceptions. And what if he thought he was and found out down the road that he isn't? Well the incense filled rooms of the Greek classics isn't too bad.

In the climb of a man's career … ambition and search for fame … the way a kid is brought up self-conscious ... I figure most kids would want to move a little fast … even if that meant being kept in the dark about the sources of their intrinsic knowledge. But the life-force of the individual is ever watchful … and in fair consideration of the contribution by everyone …. makes it plain to the individual when he has less to be proud of. Such is often the experience of a young man today approaching adulthood.

But do we also share an equal value of contribution to life with everyone in the world? My answer would be a resounding ' Yes.' Each is an expert art form … cultivated only by the nurturing and care that a lived experience can bring to it. And after a period of spinning his wheels … when the individual raises his face to the light of the sun … he realizes he understands the world ... it takes everybody to make it work.

Indic swamys use the expression … ' all this is that ' and it most certainly is … without pushing and shoving. It takes a new view that includes ourselves in our perceptions of the world. We are no longer standing on the bow of the ship of trans-migration looking at the coastline of the land we have come to. We are arrived. Our dreams of yore are coming into familiarity with our mind and passions. Its quite an experience to feel that what we want is also what the world wants. It feels like a promise kept.