Onlyness by Santosh Jha (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📕

Melissa, as Shiv says, is innocent, not intelligently ingenious to decipher elemental realisms of life. She is definitely new to the idea of the male element of nature being the initiator of nurturance and not provision. The males often accept and even pride themselves in donning the role of a provider, even when their essential nature has to be of nurturer. Genetically too, the male DNA initiates the process of nurturance of body, which the female DNA goes on to make. Melissa has been in a culture of male element being associated with passion and provision. With Shiv, she is beginning to unlearn it and accept Shiv’s nature of compassion and nurturance. The female elements unconsciously take to creation when the male elements initiate the process and ensure a milieu of nurturance and compassion. Melissa has already triggered of the engendering of creation of something, which comes natural to a woman, when the elemental nurturance of man sets up the milieu for her artistry.

Oblivious of her inner and subconscious state, Shiv is moving ahead with his plan, which the chief conspirator has assigned him. He needs to wrap it up fast. Shiv takes Melissa to the jungle early morning and this time, he takes her to the other side of the cliff, where the river stream flows calmly over almost a flat slope, before falling from the cliff to form a waterfall. It is calm there. Melissa walks idly, following Shiv and when he walks a distance ahead, she runs like a kid and grabs his arms.

“Shiv, I was thinking, if I have to gift you something, I cannot, because I really don’t know, what you like most. If you tell me, about your likes and dislikes, it shall be easy for me.”

Shiv does not respond. He does not even look at her. He stops, looks around and finally decides to sit at a place, which is close to river stream and opens to stretched landscape. He gestures to Melissa to sit in front of him. As she sits close to him, he picks up a little pebble and puts it in her hands.

“Melissa, I wish to have a gift from you, which is most precious for me but I know, you shall give it to me only when you join my consciousness to instill the same value and worth to it, which I see in it. The pebble in your hand was a huge boulder, placed on the mountaintop, thousands of years back. The melting glacier brought it on the course of the river, which corroded it for thousands of years. The boulder has now transformed into a pebble and thousands of years from now, it shall drift down with the river flow and finally turn into sand particle. However, despite its journey from the mountaintop to the doors of the sea, it shall retain its core and essential character. The melting, the corrosion, the drift and metamorphosis of life-living cyclicality are nature’s inevitable and randomized processes, which every entity has to go through. They all shape and design differentiated destinies for different entities. However, lucky and blessed are those, who retain their character in the entirety of the cosmic causality. If you think it right and feel what I feel, you can give this pebble as the most precious gift to me with your innocent and honest blessings that I could be like this pebble and retain my character, in all the undulations of life, till I dissolve into the doorstep of death. A woman is a mother and a mother’s blessing always has certain fruition for her child.”

“Shiv, this is not fair. I cannot agree to it. I want this gift from you. I need it more than you. You have to take this pebble back in your hand and then give it to me as the most precious gift, with lots and lots of your blessings; rather all your blessings to me. A man is also a father and a father’s blessing always has certain fruition for his daughter. I know that. My dad surely blessed me and that is why, I am here and now I am going to receive this most precious gift of my life. You too said it to me in Rishikesh ashram that all diamonds naturally belong to women. This is my diamond and they belong to me. Do I remind you that I am an empress and you are a yogi? Diamonds always belong to empresses. Give it to me!”

Shiv cannot resist a smile. He takes the pebble from her hand, dips it in the river water, wraps it in a fresh leaf and gives it back to her. She clutches it in her palm.

“Melissa, put the pebble back in the river, then only it shall complete its destined journey.”

“But this is my diamond, you gave it to me! It belongs to me now, the river anyway has plenty of them. Shiv, this is not fair!”

Shiv knows how to best handle her innocent pranks. He rises, takes her hands in his, affectionately pulls her up and tenderly drags her towards the river. In the river water, he gestures her to drop the pebble. She places the pebble carefully along a larger stone and gestures to Shiv that she would pick it back, when she would come alone here. Shiv smiles and pulls her back to where they seated before.

“Melissa, last night, you had asked a question and now you yourself have answered it. You wanted to know, how this super consciousness within, enables the self to decide the matrix of all decision-making of action-behavior, independent of the innate instincts and subconscious mind. How one attains this facility of being the conscious decider of what should ideally present oneself with his or her decision-matrix at any point of time in life. You have done it right now.”

“No no. I have not done anything. I was not even onto the question, how can I answer it?”

“You have Melissa. I explain it to you. You accepted a pebble as diamond; inspired a worth and utility of value of a diamond in a useless pebble, and you felt joy about its possession. And then you agreed to renouncing it for a larger joy. This way, your super conscious prevailed over your instinctive and cultured self, engendered a novel matrix of a decision-making, independent of and beyond your intelligence, disposition and instinctive nature, which otherwise would never ever accept the utility of a pebble at par with a diamond. Within your consciousness, there is a culture, a nature and innate judgment mechanism, which usually assigns values and decides the utility of an entity. They would usually have decided that a pebble is worthless and a diamond is precious. However, your super consciousness overruled all fixed parameters of your conscious and subconscious minds and came forward as the conscious decider of what should ideally present you with your decision-matrix at this point of time in life. Your super consciousness aligned with continuous and immortal intangible entity, renouncing the mortal value and utility of the tangible matter. This is something available to humans only. This facility is your super conscious mind. This facility is essentially a function of imagination, which is duly supported by memories of experiences we have. Early humans succeeded in evolving fast and better by using their power of imagination to win over all obstacles. We have the facility to imagine ourselves out of the body and even out of the milieu to intangibly position ourselves in a situation, which is virtual and then weave possibilities to turn this virtual realism into a largely realistic one. In Indian spiritual philosophy, the ancestors prescribed a mechanism to be in exalted state of this super consciousness. It is essentially, a patterned way to make your intangible power of imagination highly focused, pure and objectively holistic. Indian philosophy stresses on purity and objectivity of the super consciousness as this power is open to use and misuse. They empirically observed that this facility is very powerful and can be used for evil mechanisms. Mythologies all over the world have stories of powerful evil forces, which also used this same facility of imaginations for their devilish attainments. Even today, the world over, the trouble is the same. The power of imagination of humanity is enhancing fast but unfortunately, many of the creations of the super consciousness are drifting into evil practices.”

“Shiv, this seems a complex notion. I shall need simple explanations.”

“Melissa, I try my best to make it all simple, though it is somehow a complex idea as it involves multidimensional factors. This is not explainable in scientific language and terms as science is still not in the stage of finality. What I explain to you are in terms of spiritual philosophy, which is at the core of ancient Indian worldview. Science also explains the same mechanisms but uses different terms and frameworks. The Indian spiritual philosophy maintains that there is a continuous and complex interaction always going on between nature and humans. It defines nature as drishya, something, which is seen and observed. It constitutes of two parts – the first being the tangible factors in external environment, which includes the contemporary culture, in which a human being lives. The second part is the intangible factors of body’s intrinsic nature or disposition. This intrinsic disposition has three attributes – sato gun (receptive mode), rajo gun (action mode) and tamo gun (inertia mode). These three attributes are simultaneously present in all humans, even while different people may have different mix of the three attributes. Even science says, people can be identified as of a particular shade of consciousness, depending on amount and intensity the three attributes of reception, action and inertia in a person. One single person can be in different shade of consciousness, at different stages of life, as there are changes taking in the quotient of the three attributes. The society or larger physical milieu, we live in, also has these three attributes of reception, action and inertia. It is self-evident that in a small and simple society, where material pursuits are very limited and small population naturally has larger proximity and intimacy between them, the predominant attribute of the milieu shall be reception. This shall make the society and its people in larger internal wellness but external discomfort. However, in the unmanageably large and complex societies, we live today, where there is a deluge of material pursuits to attain, the predominant attribute of milieu shall be action and in many societies, where physical comfort and personal attainments have become high, the predominant attribute shall be inertia. It is only natural and self-evident that such later societies shall have more conflicts, larger competitiveness, greater violence and less tolerance and stability but better external comforts. This is so self-evident for all of us. Every attribute comes with an associated package of societal culture and individual behavior-action. A person living in a society where reception is predominant attribute shall behave differently than a person living in the society where predominant attribute is action or inertia. It is empirically observable to all that the nature or drishya is a realism, which is in continuous change as the attributes and elements constituting it are mutually contradictory in nature. Modern psychology too accepts this. A person, who has a dominant consciousness of action, may eventually realize its futility and shall accept the utility of reception mode. The vice-versa is also possible. The same is true with societies. In contemporary American society, the predominant attribute is action, even while large part of it has inertia, because of larger availability of comforts. It