Eye of the Storm

A Calm amidst the Chaos

Its a weather phenomenon … in which the center of a devastating storm is described as being completely calm … in a statement of contradiction … about the facts of nature. Certainly a person encountering such an experience … will not find his remedy in railing at the havoc caused by the storm. But he needs to find his center … and be aware of the incredible nature of contradictions in nature … as much as in life.

I remember jointly renting a bungalow … in my early working days … where the living room was designed to be open to the outside environment … with honey-combed walls. A friend who didn't want to join us … came to visit sometime later … and we were sitting in the living room chatting. He had been going on … about this and that … how the design is off … the staircase too steep and so forth. In the living room he asked … ' doesn't the water get in?' … in obvious reference to tropical weather. ' Only when it rains ' … we had replied.

Swami Agehananda Bharati … an American … also known as Leopold Fischer … lectured at Syracuse university … in New York. In a life lived … in contemplation of the issues … he had come to the conclusion that in the American experience … in these times … life has the feel of a person in an eye of the storm … while he himself is entirely calm. He was on the board of several companies … and brought a special brand of peace and effectiveness … to their decision making.

In the holy city of Mecca … while the haj is being performed … one views the scene … of masses of people encircling the Ka'aba … as something similar in experience. In the middle-east its a statement of complete faith … while in the west … it may be the scientific suggestion of the ' black box theory ' … in the mind … that's encircled by the daily activity of life … that surrounds it. I don't suppose that says … Americans are like Muslims … but it does say … that one person's views … when given sufficient contemplation by another … does form a verification of its truth.

A calm … per se … doesn't guarantee … that its content is assured … unless a person also applies to it a rigorous analysis of content. In a true calm … it creates a reflection of all possibilities … and its our responsibility to ensure … that we apply it with the correct relevance to the situations we encounter. To do that … our calm needs tutoring … in the knowledge of the world … its interpretation as to meaning … and the tests of its validity.

However when asked about the source of life … we are obliged to respond by saying … ' it must be the black box.' Its a scientifically accurate answer … but there it is … in a mind … that doesn't have all the answers … we are socially obliged to improvise. And that puts us … face to face with our responsibilities regarding the contents of the black box … including that time … when we described how God created the world in 7 days. We apply ourselves in good faith … and trust that the actual reality … wouldn't be too far away.

And that in a lot of ways … describes our present predicament … about living in the eye of the storm. Did we ourselves … in our improvisation and amusement … build the environment around us … and has that changed into a storm? It would be primarily a storm of disbelief … since we know we had a hand in its making. But surely … if we made it ourselves … we can unmake it … purely by our own efforts … without revealing the desperate storms of our natures to others?

But who is it that we don't want to reveal ourselves to? Obviously its someone we thought was wrong … had got it all mixed-up … and perhaps are wearing a millstone around their own necks. That would be embarrassing … wouldn't it? When we discover something like a … ' black box theory ' do we relate that to … common practices in communities … or do we hail that as a pioneering discovery … a product of our achievement but not of the world?

We live in a world community … in our own privacy … behind honey-combed walls … in which social decorum … and respect for individual belief of others … is that which .. preserves our hidden desperate natures. How deep have we moved into our own … ' black box ' … to escape detection … and preserve the suave of knowing? Its a little like circumcision isn't it? A snip … a bandage … and we have started the process of healing.

The Bible describes creation as begun from the chaos. Isn't that like the black box also? I figure I might know … what is the content of the chaos … that's found in the storm … surrounding the black box today. I see the dead body of the female and mother identity … and I see the gay individual. Their bodies float … in the tides and seasons of the storms … as each is fundamentally a mortal enemy of the other. Where one lives … the other will surely die … to be born again another day.

In mother Goddess worship … Indic texts refer to … the fight between the mother … and two brothers … in an unusual relationship with each other. They are called by one name … Mahisasuran … translated as … a worthy enemy. In life in the society … we organize ourselves around the need … to be discrete … to ensure an orderly life and relations. To seek to champion an issue … that everybody is already familiar with … and they manage it in the calm of the storm … is to reap the whirlwind. It disrupts the only peace we know. And that would cause a colossus of storms.