Waiting for the Next

By Ashok Sharda

‘Feeble Creature’ is arrested and charged with committing a crime under several penal codes for causing disruption and chaos by inflicting unfounded fear among the masses. His crime is writing and circulating four articles taking an extreme contrarian view that humankind is suffering from ‘progeria’, the rarest of rare diseases known to medical science.

In his defense before the court of justice, he says- “I sincerely desired to infuse the real meaning of ‘living’ in the psyche of mankind so that they may battle out the death inflicted by this metaphysical ailment I conveniently call ‘Progeria’. I haven’t committed any crime in doing so by expressing my conviction, cautioning and alerting the commoners to take notice. It is up to them to take notice, realize and act or ignore the warning”

This novel depicts the very cause that has led mankind to this lethal metaphysical ailment, the author termed as ‘metaphysical progeria’. The author has also ventured to present a possible remedy, who only the rarest of the rare may chance to put into application. He does this by taking readers on a short journey aboard a train, a perfect analogy for the journey of life as passengers seems ever waiting for the next, an assumed time, projecting data internalized from dead past.

The author dares to write an obituary of the metaphysical demise of mankind, unravelling how he arrives at this conclusion. The author believes, however, that those who choose themselves still have a chance to rise from their metaphysical graves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jan 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543706093

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Copyright © 2020 by Ashok Sharda.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Partridge India

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Disclaimer

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Preface

I Have to Catch a Train

The Hidden Persuaders of Death Disguised in Life

The Traffic

Waiting for the Train

Co-Passengers

Taking Time-Out from Time

A Feeble Warrior Who Changed His Name to Feeble Creature

‘Mankind is Afflicted with Progeria’- Claimed Feeble Creature

Metaphysical Ailment Needs Metaphysical Remedy

Stop the World

A Journey One Travelled Not

Can the Train Make Good the Lost Time?

Where Do I Go from Here?

What’s next?

Obituary

INTRODUCTION

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Ashok Sharda

W ords said by me in my introduction would reflect my image of me, I have rightly or wrongly built up inside me. If I entrust this task to someone else, his words, said in my introduction would reflect his image of me.

Then who I am? I do not ask this question because this will necessitate me to also ask- who is the questioner.

When I happen to turn my attention inwards, I happen to spot multitude of selves competing to become me.

When I turn my attention upon itself, I become. But that’s a long shot.

I am here as a storyteller. Hence, I will leave my storyteller to introduce him, which he has, in his words, in this book in your hands.

Waiting for the Next

An endeavor to infuse the real meaning of ‘living’ in the psyche of mankind suffering from a metaphysical ailment termed as ‘metaphysical progeria’. One cannot live a moment before nor a moment after.

DISCLAIMER

A ll the characters in this novel are fictitious as the train journey is and yet so true. This wasn’t a train ride but my journey through the life in the space of metaphysical notime.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I acknowledge no one. I can take names, several, and thank them for playing the role they played in helping me in giving shape to this piece of my writing, followed by its publication. But going by metaphysical laws, no effect can effectuate without a cause and every cause in turn is a result of an effect. If I sincerely wish to go back and find the original cause which lead me to where I am, what I have written and all the events that lead to publication of this long story, I believe it will lead me to several chains of cause and effect which can go back several thousand years and yet we will never arrive at the original cause. Nothing in this universe is unconnected.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this long story to all those beings who are in a constant battle with their linear selves standing at the very opening of vertical nospace notime

PREFACE

I had written a short story, titled ‘Waiting for the next’, complete in all respect. While doing final reading of this story for compilation of an anthology I had intended to publish, a thought, in the form of a question, cropped up– ‘don’t you think the theme of this story needs a larger canvas?’ I decided, then and there, to expand my canvas by elaborating my ideas on the very theme, ‘inclination of human mind is to perennially be in the next’. This to me is a universal ailment I have termed as ‘metaphysical progeria’. This is how this novel ‘Waiting for the Next’ came into existence, metamorphosing from a short story of four thousand odd words into over hundred and twenty thousand words novel.

People tend to rush from one point of time to another for reasons- justified by their conditioned minds- or for no reason of their own, because when they arrive at the other, they rush towards the next, driven by an ever shunting pendulum inside their heads which stops not, which hardly ever slows down, moving from dead to assumed to dead to assumed ‘physical time’ and so on and on, in its unstoppable rush till they arrive at a place devoid of any next. Pathetically, I watch, the same haste emanating from inside me, buffering the very experience of my ‘living’. This ‘rush’ seems to have afflicted the entire mankind for which nature and humans seem equally responsible. The cause and a possible remedy of this ailment is the theme of this novel.

‘Time’ moves at its own pace, experienced severally by experiencers, subject to different degrees of active or passive state of their presence. Normally, we aren’t conscious of it, invariably, lost in the ‘next’. We feel more at ‘home’ when lost in some sense-gratifying act unaware of the momentum of time, letting it transport us towards a destination, not of our choice. But, at times, in the course of our insuppressible shunts, mostly mechanical, we sense the ‘burden of time’ in the moments we become conscious of it. Now, we shall start flipping through the pages of time, back and forth, in our endeavour to unburden the unease of the burden. Now, we shall hang on to waiting time; our lives will remain suspended till we arrive at the ‘assumed next’ which won’t be the last because there will be a ‘next’ ever in the offing, lurking to eat us away and so on at every so-called ‘next’. Psychologically, living in suspension, for a ‘next’ is relatively easier than living out a lifetime. It’s also difficult to think of a far-flung ‘next’. We shall think of the next milestone when we arrive at the next, though we shall ever dream of the assumed hundredth.

‘Next’ infuses a false relief and, at times, enthuse. One desires to get out of a situation which is not conducive of one’s dream but who can surpass the indefatigable mountainous ‘time’? ‘Pass time’, somehow, is the mantra and in doing so ‘living’ bypasses us. History is full of ‘dream sellers’, the hidden persuaders. But ‘time’ is the biggest persuader, not so hidden and yet not visible.

Lost time isn’t retrievable, nor can it be repossessed. Despite this fact, Incidentally, in our shunts in quest for a gratifying pass time, we squander our time, which in other words can only mean frivolling away with life. It’s not the time we think we are consuming. It’s always the ‘time’, which is swallowing us up, spitting us when our ‘time’ is done with.

As such, we take life as a journey, a given process of time, impregnate with all the uncertainties despite its certain end with uncertainty attached to it. In Sanskrit time and death are synonyms and the word is- kaal. The end of anyone’s ‘time’ is the end of life. The process of life which apparently is the process of time is also process of death. Time will not stop in its movement, nor will stop the process of death, one may call decay. Where does one find life in this decaying process? This makes time a personal time, finite in all respect, confined to one’s personal history. The generalized history may record; such and such man was born at such and such time on such and such day in such and such month in such and such year. The physical time is okay for recording, for documentation but isn’t felicitous or pertinent for ‘living, because living isn’t history. Living isn’t a projection based on one’s personal or generalized history. Life isn’t a modified mouse trap based on past data. Living is here and now, in this time-train which incidentally has no stoppages. Time has none. Life has none. It’s an unstoppable journey either one lives from moment to moment or in an elongated moment, or keeps on postponing, waiting for the next, and when next arrives for yet another next.

Mankind is pathetically ill.

Human approach to time, as such, is defective. On human measurement, life is measured in terms of physical time, in years, months and days. But, can one measure ‘living’ on any yard stick other than the very experience of living in its very momentum? Life cannot be lived in jumps, or in shunts, a moment now and a moment in the assumed next. It cannot be lived in waiting for a conducive moment. One also cannot take time out from time like in a game of soccer, or by depositing the ‘time out’ in ‘time saving bank account’ and use when one needs it. Life is very much here, resides right here and not in any dream world; not in its projection in the four walls of an assumed box; it right ‘here’, boundless.

But, as such, we are all inclined to take ‘time-out’ from time (we cannot, as such, in actuality), driven by doings of laws and emphatically aided by the ‘common belief’. Yet, what I have learnt in the course of my shunts between ‘dreams and deaths’, is that, one can find ‘life’ if one can walk step in step with one’s dream and one’s death. In these walks, step in step with ‘time’, dream and death will turn into life. These walks (unwalked) will lead one to notime, the domain of life.

We understand and evaluate ‘time’ on a very shallow ground. We think it’s a race with time and in time. Those, who have walked out of this race, lost, or those, who walked out for reasons internal or external, can be often found commenting- ‘It’s a rat race’- generalizing their comment on modern ways of life. A tired friend once commented, ratifying the above stated fact- ‘Yes…a rat race. Everyone seems to be battling to move as fast their situation lets them, ahead, on a path they identify as life. They feel good and exalted when they overtake a ‘nobody’. But they forget that despite their movement ahead of some, on this assumed path, they remain a rat.’

Life isn’t an object which needs a definition or description. Life isn’t a concept which needs supporting hands of other concepts to draw a sketch and say- this is life. Life is in the living; this is what I have experienced in a hard way. But we are so infected by words, representing concepts, that I can’t help but ask my self- what is living?

There’s an essential anomaly in our evaluation of not just what living is but also its appraisal. The differentiating factor from inanimate can biologically be termed as life but not ‘living’. We have been defectively measuring life on physical calendar time since time immemorial. How can a clock or a calendar determine how much have we splurged and how much have we literally ‘lived’? Living can only be determined in living. It’s a metaphysical experience.

The first quote I ever read on life was when I was twelve years of age, which I paraphrase here- Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the road is. It felt intellectually enlightening. Much later I realized that words can serve as reminder if one could peep into its spirit. They can ignite you to act upon by changing your moods. But beyond this they lose their power. They are incapable to make one walk through this journey, wise men synonymized with life.

Several quotes, I read hereafter, had religious pitch that found destination of this journey at the threshold of heaven, I wasn’t interested because at this early age an inquisitor had taken birth inside me who had brought me to a crossroad with questions, I wanted answers. An atheist was shaping up inside me like an embryo without legs yet, but sooner than later, it will find its legs when I shall find answers to what is ‘living’.

I tried to search out the author of a quote that enthused me at a later date but failed as this quote was attributed to several persons including ‘anonymous’. The quote is ‘Life is a Journey, not a destination’.

This catchy quote, subsequently, turned out to become my pet phrase. I used to bring this quote in my every serious talk with my friends or else when I tried to turn a light talk into serious. Interestingly people ignored but posed as if they knew and understood.

In my search to find the bona fide author of this quote I came across a name- Ralph Waldo Emerson but when I pursued further, I found more of words he had said elaborating his thought- ‘To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.’

I heartily accepted two parts of his quote, ‘to finish the moment’ and ‘to find the journey’s end in every step of the road’ but rejected the other part ‘to live greatest number of good hours’.

I had reasons engraved in my psyche ever since I was twelve years old. I happened to meet an unkempt boorish looking old man who made me draw a line from point to point and said- ‘elongated point into a line is no more a point. As such, elongated moment is no more a ‘time’ measured in hour, minute or a moment. It is a continued life without any before or without any after. It just IS. Life IS my young friend.’

After a pause he had furthered his discourse- ‘this is how one should live, not from ‘time to time’ not just from moment to moment but in an elongated moment. Elongated moment is life, like an elongated point is a line. Reinforce this thought deep inside you.’

I did not know how to reinforce the thought deep inside me at that age of twelve. But somehow it got reinforced and got elongated too, in days to come.

I never forgot his words. I never saw him again, but his words never left me, rather they became the very cause of birth of a metaphysician inside me. My ponderance on ‘life is a journey’ is ever in the light of his words.

The propounders of, ‘life is a journey’, tend to enumerate life in terms of time, ever looking forward to ‘next’, hoping a smooth passage as the current phase of the journey is ever full of pits and bumps. People ignore the fact that ‘time’ in itself is a big obstruction for the smooth passage of this journey in ‘time’ and instead of living through IS they let mind, a permanent resident of time, to project a ‘likable’ happening in its perennial wait for occurrence of likable happenings. Mind never feels reconciled with ‘what is’. It tends to impose ‘what should be’ on ‘what is’. Looking forward is living in the next, living in a time which isn’t, hoping, projecting, rushing towards ‘what is not’ in an assumed ‘should be’. ‘What is’ is unchangeable, though one can change the very ‘take’ of ‘is’. IS must be accepted in its totality, then and then only, bumps and pits on the way shall find its neutralization.

The cause of pain lies within us, in our hopes. The cause of our tendency to ever look forward is hope. (We can go back and find a cause behind every effect and effect turned cause behind every cause, endlessly, till we arrive at an original cause which lays in unknown territory) Death of a man living on the two hundred forty third street of London cannot cause us any pain because he shatters no hopes. Our hopes are self-centred, attached to our dreams, confined to what ‘should be’.

The observer and the observed are one. This is what the whole Vedanta means to me. The observer is ‘you’ and what’s being observed is the ‘scene’ before ‘you’. The scene is only present when one is present and so is with life. One can only be present in the present, which is from moment to moment, despite the uncertain relationship with the time. One can only eat, treat and experience life when one eats, treats and experiences life and not when one is in the ‘next’. Advaitists (non-dualists) philosophers have further elucidated that- when the observer and the observed are not one, it causes a conflict. Conflict causes pain. I had replaced pain with death in my elucidation of dualistic approach to life. Dualism causes metaphysical death.

Nothing happens in this world without a cause because ‘what is’, is an effect and every effect effectuates because of a cause. A train just can’t reach its destination unless it goes through a definite route on a definite track. If it’s any place in any given point of time (effect) it’s because it moves on a track called cause and effect. But our mind drifts, habitually so, or is it owing to biological inclination, driving it to shunt in ‘time’, having found its existence as one dimensional entity. The drive to be in next is a desire to wait and hope for an effect with or without a cause. Causes, as such, are hidden behind every manifestation, we know as ‘effect’. What is hidden behind is not linear. One can find causes in linearity but that would be historical and not real. At times, real and historical causes can match yet the basics will differ.

Human approach is linear in thoughts, in his behaviour. His physical acts may seem being executed in the four dimensions of space time continuum –he cannot perform otherwise on the physical plane- but the cause driving him to act is invariably borrowed from his past. Its dualistic in nature. Take for example any cause that enthuse or compels him to take a stand and act. His so-called liking, disliking, desires, concept of good or bad or any other concept, taste, choices…anything… they all emanate from history, affects his present and finds its projection on future. Every liking, every disliking must have a history, result of a linear thought process. It is not determined ever in the present. A thought or a feeling of liking, confronting another thought of ‘it’s not good for me’, is again result of a linear thought process.

Thoughts of any nature keep the world of ‘time’ intact. These thoughts emanate not from nowhere. They have a definite source in our history on timeline. Arising of any thought is a projection, an imposition on what can be termed as ‘present’. One is never out of the clutches of ‘time’.

When I utter my name, the articulation of the first alphabet turns dead before my articulation arrives at the second alphabetic sound of the name and the next is yet in the offing. Mathematically, no time is present because the middle part of articulation of my name can also be divided into three, two absent from present and the one present can further be divided into three and so on and on. Present is just a fleeting experience in continuum. And the one, who moves with this continuum moves in ‘notime’. For him time stops.

On the physical plane, life travels in a ‘time-train’ on a parallel track and we, on the other. Now can we ever embrace life if we and the ‘time- train’ move in opposite direction or move at different pace in the same direction? This is what is visibly happening with mankind. They tend to either move in the direction opposite to the movement of the ‘time-train’ or tend to move at a pace faster or slower than the speed of time-train. As a matter of fact, their movement is whimsical, changing their pace and direction on whim or depending on the condition of the ups and downs of the track. They don’t move, step in step, with the passage of ‘time’, while negotiating ups and downs of the track, they fail to neutralize the whims of the mind. But if we succeed in neutralizing the mind, we will realize that our movement isn’t independent of the movement of the ‘time-train’. The nearer is the speed of our movement on this parallel track in relation to the speed of the ‘time-train’, closer we are to life because the ‘time-train’ now moves slower in relation to our movement. And when we start moving at the same pace as the pace of the time-train, the time train stops in relation to us and we stop in relation to the ‘time-train’. Now, we can walk into this time-train which is no more a time-train but a ‘notime train’. It’s not moving in relation to our movement.

As said, mind is one dimensional. It has one space to traverse into- time. It can’t stand ‘notime’, in which ‘time’ metamorphose into, when one moves in time with time. Mind stimulates, provokes, commands and compels one by engendering thoughts and feelings to run away from the moment, spread before us.

We are inclined to succumb to an act so as to not to realize time because the moment we realize time, we feel we are stuck. We don’t like waiting, but then we also want time to flow at a faster pace even when we are in the ‘time’ we have been waiting. We are always in haste. Why do we always want to be in the next? Next is an entity which arrives nowhere, not in any time. Why are we driven by the so-called ‘time consciousness’?

My use of ‘time-consciousness’ is a misnomer here because it isn’t being ‘conscious’ in any creative or metaphysical sense but in a destructive way, a consciousness which destroys life, chasing one away from actual ‘conscious living’. Mind tends to ‘pass time’ failing to confront ‘time’. Metaphysically, ‘passing time’ is an act executed in passivity; ‘consciousness’ is a state of active participation in acts of life. In other words, a celebration of life and not a time pass. If one need to coin a phrase as synonym of ‘time pass’ I will opt ‘time-out from the momentum of life’. The other, which sounds too pessimistic and harsh, but I won’t mind mentioning- ‘succumbing to instinct of death’.

The time, as such is never lost. It ever knocks our doors; our very presence. Incidentally, we are found napping despite our so-called time consciousness.

Mind is a great divider. It employs several weapons to keep us divided. Hope is one of it. ‘hope’ turns survival instinct into death instinct. We hope for a better life based on concepts and dreams. We want what is not here. We must look forward. This makes us chase next. We ignorantly start chasing death in our traverse into next. Death instinct does the same, drives you to death in the disguise of a story we call life. Sad.

When mind feels the density of ‘time’ it is bent upon to live an hour like a minute causing immense resistance from inside. One thinks nothing other than to run away from the spot in search of an amenable time-pass escape route. ‘Time’ assumes shape of an enormous mountain mind can never surmount. Mind is, after all, an entity who survives shunting in ‘time’ begotten by it.

‘Nothing’ is source the of all and everything, not unlike, notime is source of all time. What do we do with this knowing, if in action, we keep on shunting from things to things from a ‘time’ to another ‘time’.

Train journey is a perfect analogy of journey of life, as passengers seems to be waiting to arrive at their predetermined destination. But do they ever feel at home with any destination? This is the theme of this novel. Humankind ever seem to be in the next- assumed projection of data’s one internalizes from one’s past.

There are two laws, in tandem with several other metaphysical laws, which plays vital role in pushing humans towards next. These laws are ‘law of remembering and forgetting’ and ‘law of associations’. One brings to the fore a ‘thought’ or a ‘feeling’ or a ‘scene’, other finds continuity, from thought to thought or feelings or associated feelings or scene. No doubt that nothing ‘happens’ without the doings of ‘law of cause and effect’ which works behind the curtain. In the middle of a ‘continuity’ the ‘law of deviation’ comes into play to keep humans ever shunting in linear time.

We cannot attain anything unless we defy the laws. Defiance of any metaphysical law is only possible when we know the very inside out of the law and its very mechanism. We must pay them with the same coin. Our mechanicalness is the process of laws. Our conscious efforts help us undo this process. Associatedness reminds us of things, energizes our ‘self-suggestion’ which brings to the fore the associated thoughts; desires, pain and pleasure. The only course is to disassociate the associations by winning the associations, the energy source.

A metaphysician who has made ‘me’ his home keeps on reminding me of his golden words I have made him repeat in my novel, more than once- ‘One cannot live a moment before or a moment after.’

This novel is a metaphorical depiction of my metaphysical journey which takes place on intellectual plane in my head incessantly. This journey recurs time and again. I have done my best to confine the same in an assumed journey aboard a train. The story beneath the surface reflects my thought process I have tried to project in the outer story.

What’s left behind was easy even if it wasn’t easy, then. Journeys are difficult, bore some and tiring in the time we traverse through it. One can now recall those times with a smile; exaggerate the difficulties with smiles or tears or simply ignore or project it on to future, recalling it, as and when, the associated event or a thought or a thought associated thought brings it to the fore. Now a new boredom shall envelope us, we shall have to deal with. This is how life is, perennial burden of history and boredom. It will keep on changing its clothes but, in essence, the burden shall prevail.

My Metaphysicians, not unlike other metaphysicians, have talked of ‘unburdening the burden’, travelling light. Metaphysicians use different words, but they all mean the same. ‘It’s not life which is a burden’ he told me once and went on to elaborate- ‘It’s your history. Shed the history, erase.’- he had said insisting. ‘Life is a journey. Enjoy every bit of it without letting history bring heaviness or excitement, or boredom. Journey is not where you will arrive in the next because there is no ‘next’. The journey is in the process of journey and lighter you travel; more enjoyable it will sense.’

There is a ‘next’ ever in the offing, an impulsive ever persisting next, which shall never arrive despite untiring wait. Yet, every one of us will arrive at a destination which wouldn’t be ours, the most certain despite its uncertainty. But are we ever going back to our drawing boards to re-evaluate our approach to ‘next’?

We, the creation par excellence, moved nowhere because we were ever in a next and there was ever a next in the offing, we had to wait for, before yet another next. People living a superficial life do claim technological evolution as ‘movement’. The situation hasn’t changed. We are yet to commence our journey.

Physically, humans have proved themselves worthy of survival on the touch stone of ‘natural selection’ but failed to live like a true four dimensional being with their mind-body-combine intact in the ever-flowing space-time-continuum. Mankind has died his metaphysical death in ancient times, but no metaphysician ever wrote an obituary.

Possibly, there are two reasons. Metaphysicians of the past, like any human being, lived and struggled, not unlike present day metaphysicians, on two levels, physical as well as metaphysical. They knew, despite all the hopes they kept on injecting into their followers that Nature, represented and reflected by her invincible laws, is indefatigable. It follows its own design. Some of the metaphysicians, realizing the impossibility of ‘attainment’ by commoners, offered two set of teachings, one for the ‘truth seekers’ other for the ‘commoners’. But they lived in hopes, however hopeless their hopes were. The fear does inflict hopes. None of us is fearless despite our claims.

Several years ago, I wrote a tiny tragic story, wherein, my hero endeavours to smash into pieces ‘a yesterday’, disguised as ‘a new day’, before it could rise its head. He cannot let it turn into yet another yesterday, fed up with his living his yesterday every day. He can’t let it have his life move in circles like an ox in an old oil mill. His endeavour to ‘smash the time’ was extremity of his conscious effort to live in ‘notime’.

But every human story is cursed, dictated by nature, reinforced by the common belief in its sheer ignorance. Despite my hero’s preparedness to give his last ‘smashing’ blow to his ‘time’, despite his getting even the head stone ready, the common belief kills him. He failed to walk into notime. Common belief did not let him.

This character survived inside my head. I have presented this character, after reshaping him, as one of the characters in this story. I have nomenclatured him as ‘My Metaphysician’, who coaxed me to write obituary of humankind, a specie that lives without living. The obituary appears in last chapter of this novel, titled- obituary.

My metaphysician has no physical form. I have let my Metaphysician speak for me in this story. I am yet to become one with his words in action, hence he is an entity separate than me and yet resides, as he claims, in the right hemisphere of my brain. He lives in no hopes or in any fear. On the contrary he guides me out of my hopes, out of my fear when the need arises. For him there isn’t any time. Neither he is he born into time not shall he die into time like my mind, a one-dimensional entity. He is born out of the intellectual centre of my mind but that’s all the connection I have with him. He lives in the domain of notime, the abode I want to relocate. But this relocation can’t be done using an airplane, he warns me time and again. I will have to pass through a process, which has proved to be very difficult, though in words it sounds easy. Physical laws apply to me in consequence of having been born on physical plane of space-time-continuum. ‘You must try and become one with ‘time’ so as to arrive at your targeted goal of hundred milestone. You cannot take a helicopter and land at the hundredth milestone. You shall have to walk through the whole passage of hundred miles and there are obstacles in the shape of what can be termed as ‘bumps and pits’ and there are obstructions in the form of by-lanes that will lure you, I term as ‘escape-routes’. Know that if you fail to arrive at the hundredth milestone and your physical time is up, you shall never attain.’ The metaphysician residing in the right hemisphere of my skull cautions me time and again.

‘Become’ is a word which speaks for itself. Living as Mind-body-combine in the union of space-time continuum (and not fractured) on the physical plane is ‘living’. In fact, the integration of mind and body ensures amalgamation of space and time. On metaphysical plane you surpass mind-body duo and walk into notime. Yes, this is what metaphysical living is. This is what Becoming is. This is what my metaphysician keeps harping on.

Thoughts of intellectual nature can play a very little role in one’s life. ‘I think therefore I am’ ensures one’s presence temporarily but ‘amness’ is attained passing through a process. One needs to undo ‘un-amness’ to arrive at ‘amness’. This is becoming. In words no one becomes.

Thinking hardly serves a purpose despite Descartes declaration ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. I think the same thought I have thought thousand time. These thoughts, even if they are metaphysical in nature has failed to come to my aid in my endeavour to become because it has an element of assumed situations, driven by hopes. It generates a drive, temporarily and there it ends. They fail because they are bound to fail in the absence of any watchful active ‘action’ on my part. Despite being in the know of this fact I think the same thought, repeatedly. Words change but not the gist. In a situation when one feels sinking, one needs a straw of hopes and these thoughts, nomenclatured as ‘metaphysical dream’ serves the purpose of this fragile straw, essentially confined to those very moments. Action registers deep than mere words. Transition is only possible when one defies all happenings rather than justifying.

An ancient eastern metaphor has depicted humans like a drop of water in this great stream we call life in general. It claims that one is positioned- wherever one is positioned- on a dry leaf or stuck to a piece of rock, way down or up or in the middle or sides in this ever-flowing stream depends, not on individual’s choice but the metaphysical laws that rules and guides the general flow of the stream.

A metaphysician, I happened to read once, claimed that everything is yet not lost for those chosen few- who has the audacity to choose themselves- as there flows a parallel stream across this stream where there is a choice- however limited the choice might be- where one is affected by laws applicable to individuals. I believe in this metaphorical hypothesis because I have had glimpses of this stream. My failure isn’t a proof of the absence of this parallel stream.

Commoners are incapable of ‘doing’ because they are incapable of ‘undoing’. Hence, I can say with conviction they are choice-less. Only chosen few can attain knowledge. No one chooses no one. One has to choose oneself. Commoners react to situations, based on their common concepts of pleasure and pain, peace and chaos. Based on these prejudices and commonly internalized concepts, they react hence, when they perceive chaos and pain in the outside, they feel the chaos and pain.

I realized hope has made my ‘home’ its home. Hopes and metaphysician can’t live in the same house and yet they live with inherent contradictions. My Metaphysician tries his utmost to keep me adhered to my intended path, playing role of my divine guide, cautioning me at every juncture, whereas hope, the irresistible enchantress, enthuse my mind to project, drive it to ever look forward, to dream of attainment. This mar my chance of jumping into the parallel stream. I witness an ongoing battle inside me, between hopes and hopelessness, between ‘here and there’, between ‘is’ and ‘should, shunting between time and notime. Amidst this battle, when the enchantress drops me in distant lands, I return ‘home’ badly mauled.

I experience ‘death instinct’ driving me to my eventual destination much faster than I had assumed having chosen me as the chosen one. Physical survival isn’t ‘living’ in the metaphysical sense. Life isn’t living like an automaton unaware of its own living, at least, not at the level of being, we call human. I have seen and identified this as an ailment, and this ailment as ‘metaphysical progeria’.

How does one undo ‘death instinct’ chasing from the very beginning one commenced one’s journey? How does one neutralize ‘metaphysical progeria’ when one is ‘cursed’, biologically, habitually and mechanically, to drift in the ‘next’, leading one’s path to a fathomless abyss? Those who have realized and are failing are a pitiable lot and, it goes without saying, I am one.

I have given ample thought to this issue and have concluded that there’s hardly any way one can live, fulfilling the very condition our external stipulates for living, for reasons I just stated. The only course, I deduct, is to undo ‘death’ from moment to moment; undo drifts which pushes you in the lap of death; undo the very inclination of the mind which makes one ride death.

Undoing is doing in real sense- I do believe in this concept as an ancient esoteric school believed in. It won’t be out of place at this juncture to quote the prime mover of Yoga- Patanjali, who defined yoga as- Yogashch