The Waters of Life

A familiarity

When my daughter was born … I was already making contact with subtle aspects … of the forces of life. Hence what should have been an experience of the miracle of life … turned in my experience into … an admission of how little I knew about life. Something resembling a post-partum depression … descended on me … and I found myself in a Gothic sombre for 2 years … about the pleasures that life brings … individual responsibility … and our ability to know.

 

It was my introduction to the waters of life … an issue that is best handled by running away … and then returning to it in stages. Here's where I found the writings of our socio-elders … of significant help. For the child's physical welfare … a copy of Dr. Spock … was invaluable. But for all else … I turned to the traditional writings … and a little help from my mother.

 

Its Khalil Gibran … who put the issue in succinct detail … in his comment … that ' your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.'  Indic literature refers to the great dharma … that defines the purpose of life in some way … with the implied understanding that each person is ultimately responsible for their own. But the most help I received was from the public media regarding American attitudes … that defined the rights of each individual … and therefore counseled a measured concern and love … in the way we view our relations with others.

 

About 18 years later … on separation from the wife … I had moved away to another town and found a room. On some nights … I'll wake with a huge attack of the conscience … as if I had erred in my duties as father. So one day … I sat down and opened myself to the pain in the conscience … and examined it as much as I could. As is usual in these circumstances … simply removing any resistance to the conscience … is already the start to its miraculous recovery.

 

As I sat and watched its working … I could sense elements in my mind deal with specific parts of the conscience … that was wound up like a rock. As it became possible for me to open it slowly … to be examined … I was shocked to find … not one but a number of lives … that were associated with it. It affirmed for me the Indic … belief in reincarnation … and the suggestion that these … flames of the conscience … may actually be referring to my past lives.

 

I can't say that I experienced it with any clarity of meaning at what was going on. However … for some of these lives … I sensed an anguished experience of failure … like there was something important they had tried to achieve and failed.  We thereafter appeared to have sorted out … some of the anguish connected with it … and it released me to pursue my own interest in my studies … with minimum interference … from my conscience … regarding my duties in this life. A clear head is certainly a valuable instrument.

 

In any study of life … a person is bound to encounter … the delicate experience … and awareness … that they are handling the forces of life and death … and that calls for some commitment to the task. I enjoyed the confidence of the Indic studies on the subject … and felt assured that … I had enough strength of personality … to try. I was to find out later … that Indic texts … don't spell it out … for situations … involving the physical nature of the experience … instead they rely on the story of a former aspirant … in ancient times … on the issue.

 

What I finally found in the experience … surprised me … and it wasn't without some startling experiences. I found out for instance .. that I had always been responsible for my own life. Through the reliance on dreams … imagination … songs … and poetry …  I had built my hopes and expectations … in a generous contribution to the life forces … as being my subscription to the beliefs of life. But in the shocking revelation of that in my experiences … I had attempted to move … in the direction of pure faith … and thereafter … in anxious substitution with facts. I was to realize that I needed both.

 

It appears to me that … many of us read the scriptures … and the message of prophets … but do not bring that to the waters of life. Our minds stand in the way. It insists that the word of prophets are fine as an introduction … but it is the life the individual … and it is imperative that he finds out the nature of life himself. Hence many of us … gain knowledge in these studies … but we continue to assign the responsibility of our life … to that greater self … whose benevolence … we believe is …  not strained.

 

I'm being intimated with the inquiry … as to whether I would consider my knowledge of life … as sufficient as a basis for guiding my future lives. I figure I might answer that … as sufficient for the next one thousand years. Thereafter … some improvisation may continue for the second thousand years … on account of new developments … before I return to the drawing board … review the past two thousand years … and then plan again for the future. Our lives are dependent on our input … whether we do it knowingly or not.

 

The word in the popular literature in these times is that … ' man is hereafter his own priest.' That ought to be qualified as … ' in a conscious sense ' … we have until now dreamt that … we are our own God … or believed that we were able to intimate God's intentions. The growing impetus … to know in a conscious understanding … does not rely on facts alone. It creates a conscious experience of the part played by dreams … imagination … the sense perceptions … and faith. And together with our awareness and knowledge … makes for this thing we call life. And that would be my testament.