"Deep-Shallow", A Poetry

Deep-Shallow

  

Conversations need not be in prose always; Prose with some poem makes dialogue more wholesome. 

OK agreed, that wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. But the poem below might strike some chord. Actually its not poetry in the conventional sense; at the best musings of a searching soul, and the worst some play with words...not conventional, but who likes conventional anyway! 

I wrote it in Hindi a few weeks back and today I translated it in English. Forgive me if you feel the translation is not up to the mark !

गहरा-उथला

गहरी
आस, प्यास, चाह...

गहरी
चिंता, लालसा, तृष्णा...

गहरी
तन्हाई, उलफत, उलझन...

उथली
प्रीत, चेष्टा, दृष्टि...

उथला
पुरुषार्थ, परमार्थ, सौहार्द...

उथली
ज़िंदगी...

उथला होता गर गहरा
तो होती गहरी तलाश...

होती गहरी
ज़िंदगी .

 - विवेक शर्मा

The English Translation...

Deep-Shallow

Deep

wish, thirst, desire;

Deep

worry, longing, affinity;

Deep

loneliness, affection, confusion;

Shallow

love, effort, vision;

Shallow

manliness, spirituality, heartiness;

Shallow

Life;

If shallow had been deep

then deep would be the Search;

Deep would be

Life.

- Vivek Sharma

Nature does not develop man beyond a certain point

Nature Does Nor develop man beyond a certain point

(I found this line in a book called" The Fourth Way" by PD Ouspensky, a protege of Gurdjieff, and couldn't resist talking about it. It's simple, evident and yet ...profound! )



Let's start with a hypothesis.



"Notwithstanding the diverse conditions(social, demographic, religious, political, ethnic, cultural, economic, spiritual and many more) in which members of our species dwell, this diversity is of no consequence in terms of the extent to which any member of our species can develop, grow, evolve in life. It's a level playing field for all".



Weird?



Not really, let me elaborate.



If you Google "People who made it big despite the odds", you would meet people like Abraham Lincoln, Michael Oher, Keanu Reeves, Chris Gardener, Stephen Hawking, Beethoven, Walt Disney, John D Rockefeller, J. K. Rowling, Oprah Winfrey, Franklin D. Roosevelt and many others. People born in abject family conditions with no access to demographic, social, economic or even genetic dividends. But who despite the odds, made it big, really-really BIG in life.



If you  modify your Google search to "Indians who made it big despite the odds" you would meet people like Rajinikanth, Dhirubhai Ambani, M.S. Dhoni, Dr. Abdul Kalam, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Captain Gopinath, and many others, some of whom came from impoverished or very lower middle class families with nothing to justify the heights to which they eventually rose.



If instead of Googling for stalwarts you just close your eyes and think about really successful, happy and evolved people whom you know personally (basis your life journey), chances are your list might have many who started from very modest or even underprivileged backgrounds.



The question is- How & Why?



How and why some people are able to craft their life-path snatching light from the jaws of darkness and equally important why some manage to do exactly the opposite? Why is it that some born in most opportune of circumstances waste it and some with nothing to draw sustenance from are able to create a LEGACY!



Certainly all cases can't be ascribed to Gods throw of dice! That would be a mean thing to do.



So the question is why is it that "All Can't" but "Some can"? Quite obviously any progress-material or spiritual, requires Knowledge & Efforts, but why some get there and some don't?



There could be (and there are indeed) many theories and explanations for the secret sauce of success and happiness in life. Thousands of books have been written on the subject.



But today, I would like to focus on just three things, which I liked the most in "The Fourth Way". Three things which make a big difference to our evolutionary journey and which in my opinion are the crown jewels of any super-achiever or a contended soul, which most of us in our normal way of life lack! 



1.      Automatic Living +  Lack of Will to change the Automatic Mode: Notwithstanding our inner and outer world, most of us live life mechanically like a machine controlled by external influences. On top of that we live under the illusion that we have " Will". Will to chart our path as per our wish. But the truth is only a few among us are able to lead a " Willful" life, steered by our wishes and passions and not by inertia. The root cause of this is that we are seldom one unified "I" and most of the times our existence is a body of many divided "I"s, with each "I" conflicting with the others. In essence we are " Many" and not  "One"; we lack unity or one Controlling "I" within us charting our desired path.

At one moment when I say 'I', one part of me is speaking, and at another moment when I say 'I', it is quite another 'I' speaking. We do not know that we have not one 'I', but many different 'I's connected with our feelings and desires, and have no controlling 'I'. These 'I's change all the time; one suppresses another, one replaces another, and all this struggle makes up our inner life.


Some of us develop the ability to align majority of these conflicting "I"s into one controlling "I" which brings focus and direction to life giving us the ability to steer the ship of life in the desired direction.


Pedigree, ivy-league degrees or some specialized skill is not required to make it big in life, we all know this basis the life we see in our journey. People who make it big in life or are able to live a life of their choice know how to shun the automatic mode of living in favor of conscious living. That is the key to Nirvana!


2.      Evolution =f{Influences (A+B+C)}, But most of us seldom go past A:


So what is this A, B & C?


All of us in the ordinary conditions of our life are governed first by Influences A; which are the influences created in life- desire for riches, fame, health, recognition, prosperity and so on. Most of these influences manifest mechanically in us by virtue of what we see in the world and think that having A is what we need to make it big.


Then quite a few of us are able to encounter Influences B, which come from outside our life and which reach us in the form of religion, literature, philosophy, books, discourses, seminars and other such influences. These influences are conscious in their origin and we can meet these B Influences or we can pass them by without noticing them, or we can hear them and think that we understand them, use the words and at the same time have no real understanding at all.


Any person who is able to accumulate influences B, the results of these influences crystallize in him/her and form a certain kind of center of attraction which Gurdjieff called Magnetic Center and which attracts the person in a certain direction( Think Steve Jobs or Beethoven or Stephen Hawking)


When magnetic center is formed in man it becomes easier for him to attract to himself more influences B, and not to be distracted by influences A. With ordinary people influences A take so much of their time that nothing is left for other influences and they are hardly affected at all by influences B.


But if this magnetic center in man grows, then after some time he meets another man, or a group of people, from whom he can learn something different, something that is not included in influences B, and which we call Influence C. This influence is conscious in origin and action and can only be transmitted by direct instruction. If a man in whom magnetic center has grown meets with a man or a group through whom he comes into contact with Influence C, that means that he has made the first step. Then there is a possibility of development for him.


Try and explore the life history of any super achiever( public figure) or any person whom you know personally and who is happy and evolved and successful in his or her own right and you would find the presence of an Influence C( men of higher learning, mentor etc) impacting most of these lives.


In ordinary life we are so full of ourselves that we seldom go past Influences A and that is the reason why some people have a chance and some people have no chance?


3.      Entire focus on development of "Knowledge"and little/No focus on development of "Being":


The world likes us to see us as conformists- em-bracer of status quo. Getting an education(knowledge), job( More knowledge), Experience( More knowledge). Knowledge seeking is in vogue.


But real evolution demands work on Knowledge and Being both; It demands acquiring consciousness. It cannot come by itself, it cannot 'happen'.


Change of being is necessary, because we are not what we think ourselves to be. If we were what we think we are—if we had consciousness, will, if we could 'do', then only knowledge would be necessary. But we all think of ourselves differently from what we are in reality. And it is exactly this difference between -what we are and what we think we are, that shows what is lacking in our being.


A man is = What he knows +  What he is


All of us is our being. Knowledge is separate. All that we are, apart from what we know, is our being. In this division we consist of two things: what we know and what we are. From the point of view of development, the idea is that work on knowledge without work on being is not sufficient. Knowledge is limited by being. In the state in which most of us dwell getting more knowledge seldom helps us as we are not able to use it, to understand it, to connect it. Development of knowledge is not sufficient, for at a certain moment it has to stop, and instead of leading one forward it leads one backwards, because if acquisition of knowledge is not followed by change of being, all that knowledge becomes distorted in a person. Then the more knowledge one acquires, the worse off one usually is.

And the most crucial thing is - Being cannot grow by itself.

Knowledge, even very good knowledge, cannot make being grow. One needs to work on knowledge and being separately, otherwise one ceases to understand the knowledge one acquires.

And work on being is different work—a different effort is necessary. Generally speaking, we know more about our knowledge than we know about our being. In fact we know very little about ourselves; at every moment, we make mistakes about everything; we know how we cannot foresee things, how we cannot understand people, how we cannot understand things. We know all that and realize that it is all the result of our insufficient knowledge. But we do not understand the difference between people's being.

One feature of our being is that we are machines; another— that we live in only a small part of our machine; a third—we are plural, an agglomeration of several disjointed "I's.


The way out is to always think about the next step—only one step. We can understand the next step as being a little more collected than now. When we have understood that, we can think of it as being still more collected— but not completely, not finally.

So the crucial question which emerges is how does one develop one's being?

In fact the entire learning and all possibilities of development, of evolution refers to being. First of all, development of being means awakening, since the chief feature of our being is that we are asleep. By trying to awake we change our being; this is the first point. Then there are many other things: creating unity, not expressing negative emotions, observation, study of negative emotions, trying not to identify, trying to avoid useless talk—all this is work on being. It is true that in this way we acquire certain knowledge, but if it is simply intellectual knowledge it is put separately. Being is power, power to 'do', and power to 'do' is power to be different.


People who live a life of their dreams ( stalwarts or normal happy but contended people) are on a different rung of the evolutionary ladder. Apart from many other skills they have the 3 things I mentioned above; which helps them evolve holistically on both the Knowledge & Being frontier with a very focused approach to life. They are open to influences A, B & most of all C which gives them the power to influence their world.


That is the crux of the Gurdjieffian school of thought( in my opinion) which answers why is it so difficult for a man to start changing himself, to come to a possibility of growing?


Man is created in a very interesting way by nature. He is developed up to a certain point; after this point he must develop himself. Nature does not develop man beyond a certain point.


Have a wonderful weekend.


- Vivek

*The 3 points above and the description is taken from PD Ouspensky's book " The Fourth Way" *

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Hi, 

I Couldn't finish what I intended to post today so please allow me to re-post something from one of my previous blogs; something I wrote few years back. Many things in my life( and in the world too) have changed since then; but some have stayed the same. I wrote this post standing in the that space, which exists in the folds of a world which changes yet stays the same.

It's titled " Mirror Mirror on the Wall" 

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

 

Who is this guy?

Welcome to my blog.

A place where I intend to curate a world of my writings, my forthcoming books, interesting conversations and much more.

Something which I always wanted to do because of my belief that every life has a story; in fact many stories. Some sweet, some bitter, some perhaps tasteless and a few, hmm…. let's say having a lingering aftertaste, and I feel that a blog is a good place to share them, interactively.

Which I wished to do much earlier but for some barriers which prevented me from doing so.

First one being none other than Adam Smith, the founder of free market economy who perhaps very rightly taught this world, that the way to economic prosperity is through rational self-interest and competition which I took very-very seriously, pursuing self-interest and all that jazz in “Fortune 500s” of this world.

And the second and the more serious one being the potent virtue of procrastination which ensured that I witness all these stories passively, without taking any action on the calling which lay dormant in some recess of my heart.

But just by chance one day an overruling act of providence broke my slumber. It came in the form of “Bruno”, my beagle, and I am pretty sure that when Aristotle gave the concepts of “potentiality and actuality” trying to differentiate the possibility a thing might have, from the actual fulfillment of that possibility, he definitely must have included a beagle in his list of subjects for deciphering this dichotomy.

Bruno is fully actualized potentiality which means he is perpetually kinetic. It so happened that one fine morning when I was getting ready for office, Bruno for the very first time in his life sneaked into our dressing room which normally is out-of-bounds for him. I was struggling with my necktie in the full length mirror when suddenly I saw Bruno standing by my side peeping at me from the mirror. He obviously saw me, actually two of me, one outside the mirror and one inside it and got royally confused, which I gathered from that “ how weird is this” look on his face, typical of a beagle.

And then he saw himself and was shocked. He moved back a few feet growling and was at his wit's end when he saw the dog in the mirror too ceding ground. Bruno grunted and charged at the mirror and was flabbergasted to see the other dog grunt and groan too. This went on for about fifteen minutes before (perhaps) he understood that it was nobody else but him in the mirror.

The next morning as I was getting ready for office (this time with the dressing room door closed), Bruno started scratching the door from outside giving out those typical beagle wailing sounds which come out only when they want something. He was asking me to open the door. I allowed him in, and without wasting any time in niceties like wagging his tail or licking my hands, he straightaway proceeded to the mirror with a real nice swagger. He touched the mirror with his claws touching his image and then gave out a typical “Bruno chuckle” this time wagging his tail quite profusely. Then he receded back, then sideways, then again walked towards the mirror and this went on for quite some time.

He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

From that day on it became our daily ritual when Bruno would come inside the room to have a really nice time with “his self” in the mirror.He seemed to have fallen in love with what he saw in the mirror. 

I was quite worked out those days because of extreme work pressure and although I was doing well but had no clue where my life was going. Maybe I was a perfect example of Gurdjieff’s automaton- somebody who lives his life in a state of sleep not having the ability to perceive reality.

Then one day while getting ready I looked at somebody in the mirror and quite strangely my heart skipped a beat. I was not in sync with the person who looked back at me. In many ways it was like looking at a stranger. That day I couldn’t focus much on work and I don’t know from where these lines came out of me.

I wrote it in Hindi and titled it "दर्पण" and translated it in English as " Mirror". Am presenting both version here.  

Mirror

One day suddenly

standing in front of the mirror I felt

that it’s been ages since I met

myself.

In the jungle of life

by attaining speed

my boundaries expanded but

somewhere I separated, from myself.

I sometimes think that one day, someday

I will meet myself

and ask “Where have you been?”

“ What was your search?”

But till that happens,

there is the jungle, there is the speed,

there is the boundary and the breach of it

What is not is a meeting with myself..

दर्पण

एक दिन अचानक
दर्पण को देख, मुझे यह लगा,
कि है मुझे जरूरत,
खुद से मुलाकात की..

जीवन के अरण्य में ,
गति को पाकर,
विस्तार तो हुआ मेरी सीमा का,
किन्तु, मैं, मुझसे हुआ जुदा..

सोचता हूँ, एक दिन.. शायद एक दिन,,
मिलूँगा  खुद से,
और पूछुंगा
की क्या तलाश है तुझे ..

किन्तु तब तक
अरण्य है...गति है,
सीमा है, सीमा का उल्लंघन है
नहीं है बस, मुलाकात ....खुद से

Penning down these lines in itself was quite therapeutic and I knew that if kept on looking inside, one day I will find and meet that stranger, that “me” , who looked back at me when I stood in front of a mirror.

The process has started and I hope that this time I won’t let me leave me.

Have a fantastic weekend and keep checking out this space.

Cheers

Vivek