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

in mind; he is led by faith in his superiors. Adult learning however has loads of conflicts and less faith. One thing, I can now say is, knowledge is unsettling and a trouble only when you are halfway through it. Complete knowledge is always of larger utility and peace of mind. My teacher used to tell me, knowledge always tests the eligibility of a person seeking it. Knowledge, like nature, tests the pursuer with all hardships and trouble so that only those arrive to it, who are the best. It is like survival of the fittest. My teacher used to tell me, the fittest for wisdom is one who only accepts optionalessness. Knowledge has to be optionless in life, only then the journey to it becomes self-energized.”

“Shiv, you mean to say, it is only the journey to super consciousness, which is fraught with uncertainties and unsettling feelings. Once I reach there, it will be gone. During the journey, I have to keep full faith on you.”

“Melissa, it is not about you having faith in me. It is rather a misnomer. The faith you have to have is on you that you can accept the optionlessness of wisdom with conviction. The faith you need to have is on the idea that until you reach the destination, you shall not sit on the judgment of the journeys and its pains and pleasures. You need to have faith on the ultimate utility of the finality of the enterprise, which you shall launch, when you take the road to super consciousness.”

Melissa looks confused. She is unable to put all the ideas in single linearity, which he presented. She is not doubting Shiv anymore. However, she realizes that he is probably a bit reluctant as he might be unsure of her abilities to understand what he can make her learn. Shiv is continuously watching her face.

“Melissa, I am sorry, if I have burdened you with unnecessary ideas and issues. The whole idea is to make you happier and in better peace and harmony with yourself. I hope you understand that whatever I am doing, is for your wellness. I wish you to believe me that ignorance never causes pain and trouble to people and others. It is always part knowledge and half-baked wisdom of people, which lands them in major troubles. The troubles you see all around are not because of seven billion people on this planet being ignorant. The trouble is, most of us are happily egoistic about our half-truths and part knowledge. True knowledge and wisdom is always assimilative and integrative. If we see conflicts and competitiveness all around, it is not because of ignorance but because of the intelligence of people and their zeal about accepting them as only true intelligence. That is why, you might be feeling that I wish you to be fully ready for accepting wisdom in its holism or simply be happy with what you are. Wisdom is optional at the outset; however it is optionless, once we enter its domain.”

“Shiv, I appreciate your views and I wish to assure you that I am not doubting you and your words. You probably said it right. I need to have faith in myself. I probably doubt my own readiness for the journey. May be, you are right when you say I need my courage of conviction. May be I am not completely understanding whatever you wish me to understand. I will do what you said. I shall work on my preparations first. I shall work to get myself ready.”

“Take your time and while you work it out, always believe that there is nothing alien about anything new you learn and accept as wisdom. Because as, I said earlier you already have them inside you. Wisdom is just a facility to decipher and discern, what is already within us. It is just that, as you expand the horizon of your consciousness, new realisms get unraveled to you. Wisdom does not create anything; it simply reveals them to us. Science also does not create realisms; it only unravels them. Similar it is with philosophy and any new idea. Once they are revealed, you shall find that everything unraveled to you is what you already felt you had but now they express and present themselves in dimensions, which shall be novel and very satisfying. There are wisdoms, which are self-evident; making them provable and replicable is the domain of science.”

“Yes Shiv, I am beginning to get your ideas and words. I think, I can work it out.”

“Melissa, I think you already know it; still I remind you. An empress is an empress because her superiority gets sustenance not from virtues people load on her, rather the virtues are all within her soul. Virtues find expression in the consciousness of the empress and not in the people’s minds, she rules. You already have this consciousness of an empress. You just have to be natural and stop resisting your soul. Just be the empress you are.”

Long after Shiv goes away, Melissa remains puzzled as how could Shiv say similar things, which her dad kept telling her all the time, when she was a child. How could he also call her an empress like her father? She keeps thinking about Shiv and his talks with her. Late in the day, when she goes for a walk, she finds him playing with kids of the ashram. She suddenly thinks of her father. A little girl is chasing Shiv and he runs around. He fakes a fall and the girl is ecstatic catching him up. He picks her up and tosses her up in air and they both laugh uncontrollably. Melissa keeps watching him. He looks to her so much like her dad. Suddenly, she feels Shiv was right. She needs to be the empress of her dad. She has the courage and faith in her.

Back in her cottage, Melissa feels a sense of strength coming back to her. After the mishap in her life a month back, first time, she felt at ease and composure to reflect on it. She had been avoiding thoughts over what she did and how things happened after she was dumped by her fiancé. She begins to think, she has to be the empress of her destiny. She shall have to redeem her empress mode, as her dad trained her to be. She cannot be swayed by milieu and circumstances like a common person. She remembers how she erred when she was dumped. Had she been in the state of super consciousness like Shiv, she too could have been strong and poised like what Shiv looks like. She resolves to be her dad’s empress. She cannot anymore be a puppet of populism. She shall brave all, and she starts to believe, Shiv is probably the right person to help her redeem and reinvent herself. He is so much like her dad. The way he is patiently and calmly taking her step by step to newer ideas, and detailing every aspect with openness, Melissa feels, she can be with him as an innocent child, which he thinks is required for her new learning.

She even understands that Shiv has been successfully making her believe in herself and her strengths. He never rushes in with his believe, never trying to impress upon her something which she may not be comfortable with or feel odd about. She grows in confidence with him. She has seen so many men in her life and most of them either put up pranks or faked to impress upon her their egoistic attainments and superiority. Being in the celebrity business, Melissa has seen the game of one-up-manship among men and women in its bare and crudest forms. Shiv is a pleasant exception to this all. He treats her with so much respect and equality. In her celebrity life or otherwise, she always met people, who treated her as a person with all her past baggage. Shiv however always treated her with her present state of consciousness, never ever showing any inquisitiveness about what she had been. For her, it was a pleasant change as there was someone, who interacted with her as a person and not as a woman and celebrity. Still, he puts in so much respect and care for her, even when he has known her for just two days. It was so much like her dad who treated with so much respect and equality even when she was just a small kid. Her dad also believed in her and her discretion, even when he detailed about all possible aspects of any issue, for which she needed to take a decision. Her dad would always say, an empress must take her own decisions and own it, whatever be the outcome. Melissa smiles at the commonality Shiv has with her dad. He is also treating her like an empress, urging her to own her decisions. She makes her decision. She shall also own it.

**

CHAPTER 6

Shiv finds Melissa ready and waiting for her when he goes to her cottage at six in the morning to wake her up. He smiles at her and understands that she has made her mind to walk on the road to new beginning. Her body posture exuded her confidence and her face lighted up with the conviction of her resolved state of mind consciousness. Apparently, she was in a state of better poise than she had been in last few days. She walks up to receive him.

“Shiv, I won’t give you any reasons to complain from now on. I am now ready.”

“May the rising Sun bless you with light and warmth in your consciousness for you to embark on a self-energized journey, which unravels novel and nourishing life experiences.”

“Thank you so much Shiv. Every morning with you is pushing me to something novel but today, I feel, I am more with me in a state, which you have been telling me to be, a state of better poise and harmony with myself. Can you tell me; is it because of this beautiful place, your soul-searching words or something else?”

“Melissa, this is something like a magic, which works for all of us and we usually are so oblivious of our own potential as the master magician. The magic is within you, nothing external to you has any impact on you. It is like, you have unconsciously orchestrated a magical symphony, are ecstatic to experience the music and then look for who played it for you!”

“Oh my God! Shiv, why should you always give me credit for everything nice, which happens to me? What I have done? I am just what I am!”

“Come with me, let us walk to the place where we sat on the first day. I shall explain it to you, while we walk. Melissa, the magic is what you have created and benefitted from. Our consciousness is a strange entity. The entire scientific community is working to unravel the mystery of the consciousness; how it is the way it is. Still, there are realisms, which are self-evident and you can corroborate by experiencing it yourself. Deep within our consciousness are the instinctive choices of flight and fight. Once your conscious mind decided that you have to face it and fight it out, come what may, your entire body-mind mechanism spreads this resolve to every cell. As we walk, you can smell the morning fragrances of flowers blossoming all around. As the flowers bloom, the entire milieu simply becomes a facilitative catalyst to spread the fragrance. Similarly, once your conscious mind blossoms your resolve that you are going to face it with conviction, the neuro-electrical and neuro- chemical milieus within your body-mind mechanism starts to spread the fragrance and every cell of your existence cam smell it. The magic is ethereal. It expresses itself in settled and deep emotions of singular consciousness. You created the magic and it spread to your being and now that every cell of your being