66. My Childhood Angst

On the occasion of Guru Purnima, I would like to share something personal, but relevant.

Since early childhood, a deep sense of grief would engulf me every now and then, the trigger for which would be people having fun (e.g. playing games or chitchatting) or enjoying themselves in some kind of gathering (e.g. marriage functions). I would experience untold sorrow and cry profusely, as if some great tragedy has struck. For e.g. I remember as a 5 year old boy, standing in a corner with wet cheeks looking at all the elder children of our neighbourhood happily immersed in playing cricket. The same sense of hopelessness recurred several times, especially while attending family functions. The child could not articulate the reason in words (even mentally), it was just some unknown pain, but as the brain developed it got articulated. For e.g. I vividly remember going through this when I was in 12th, and was attending a marriage function.

Here I am crying for something else.
Probably saying "Let us go home"
I don't have a photo where I am crying
in actual angst. :-)

I could not digest how we can settle for such titbits of life and not seek any further. How can we be content with such things, as if that is the whole of the world and there is nothing more to life? When wounds are festering within, when suffering is inevitable sooner or later, how can we satisfy ourselves with some decorative paintjob and pretense? I am saying 'we' because apart from those episodes of grief (which occurred once in a few months), rest of the times I was also just the same — engrossed in some silly thing. Thus, desperation and frustration would accumulate over time, and erupt periodically in such episodes, stimulated by some trigger or sometimes without any trigger. I was crying for everyone, myself included. For I did not know what to do either. I only knew this cannot be it, but did not know what more it should be. It was like getting pressed into a corner, a dead end; it was suffocation.

After getting crushed in this "I do not know what to do" for several years, it has now become evident that this is what one should fundamentally do — to hold on to "I do not know" no matter what happens, and do not compromise for anything — mystical experiences, God talking to you, elegant insights, great theories from others, whatever. This is the most fundamental aspect. Everything else that we do in the name of spirituality is auxiliary. If one has not come to painfully realize the limit of psychology, if one does not realize he is in a prison, there is no getting out. There will be just more and more illusions, even in the name of spirituality. One will compromise with and settle for something or the other within the ambit of the mind, including the illusion of spirituality, and call it soul, heart, Atman, God and whatever. Without a sense of urgency, spirituality turns into the same-old social drama, into one more layer of cosmetics, another titbit to find contentment in. It is the pain of ignorance alone that will conjure enough intensity without any direction to blast off from the atmosphere of the mind. Without intensity there is anyway no going anywhere, and setting a direction means remaining within the psychology.

It is very popularly said that Guru is that which dispels darkness. But there is something worse than darkness — illusion of light (just as pretense of humility is worse than boastfulness, and so on). If I am under the spell of the mind, imagining that there is already light, where is the question of dispelling darkness at all? I will be quite content within the limits of the psychology, imagining all kinds of great things. A Guru is possible only after one begins to intensely realize the daunting darkness. 'Ru' (dispelling) is possible only after one stops denying that he is in utter 'Gu' (darkness).

Happy Guru Purnima!