CHAPTER 2
Twelve years back, when he was only 22, Mayank had experienced something which would eventually decide not only his thought process but also his life journey. It was a hot summer day and there were too many guests in his house. He liked being with people but that night he got irritated by the negative talks that the entire family and guests were indulging in and decided to sleep alone on the roof of his house.
Summer nights are not usually calm but that night he could hear the whistle of the train ten kilometers away. There wasn’t anything particular in his mind and as he rested on his back, he started to look the sky above.
It was a dark night, no moon shining and stars competed with each other for attention. Mayank kept looking at the stars. He had recently read about the theories of the origin of the universe and naturally, he started thinking about the origin of universe, continuing to gaze at the dark sky. He always created in his mind an imagery of what he thought and learnt. But he could not create an image of a gas ball exploding to create universe and subsequently creating the galaxy systems, his own earth and on it his own life. He had never clearly understood the theories of creation of the universe and that’s why that night his thoughts became confused as he kept watching the endless expanse of the dark sky and the millions of shining stars. He tried to relate his existence with the infinity of the universe, allowing his mind to travel deep inside the darkness.
It was around two o’ clock that he lost it.
Probably, he had dozed off for 15 to 20 minutes and suddenly he was awake and his mind went blank. It was a rare feeling for him. He could sense that he was what he was. He could certainly make a distinction that he was well awake and not sleeping, could feel that his eyes were seeing things but his other sensory faculties were blank. His mind could not connect to him as he remembered neither his past moments nor could he feel any moments ahead.
When you are in your full senses, your being, your existence registers a clear and explainable connect and continuity with past moments and those which will come ahead. The mind knows that I am sitting here for the last ten minutes and will sit for another five minutes, etc.
Mayank however could not connect. All he could feel was that he was among the stars and deep inside the universe. Seconds later, he could realize that he had a body which he could feel as separate from the universe where he found himself a few seconds back. The realization was followed by a strange but very powerful feeling which he could not register as never had in his life he had such a feel. He was terror struck as he clearly missed the gravity and felt the awe of the enormity of infinite universe. In a quick succession of changing realities, he found the feeling of the hard roof surface beneath him, felt a bit assured but next moment fatal fear gripped him as he felt himself completely alien to his body.
Mayank had the first encounter of the massive and unintelligible fear of the formlessness of existence that night. The fear gradually gave way to shock but for an hour he continued to feel the formlessness of being. His existential sense of time and space returned to him in a few minutes, though in very feeble strength but his biological and animated connect with his body continued to elude him for an hour or so. He had never faced such strange and unexplainable feelings and that too in an assemblage unleashed to him in such fast successions. He felt very unsettled and his mind was in a complete flux. But still, he felt deeply defeated and embarrassed that his faculties were so weak that it could not help him handle the crisis. He gained his full self an hour later but soon lost it to an overwhelming bout of sleep.
An array of medical tests in the next one week made it clear that nothing was wrong with him, at least biologically and physically. As Mayank was settling to forget the incident as one off accident in his otherwise good life, the feeling revisited him and it was day time. He was in a busy market and with a friend when he lost connect with his body like that night. This time however, there certainly was some improvement compared to the last experience. He continued to do the shopping and other usual activities. He clearly felt his existence split into two. He felt himself separate from the body which was doing all the activities as usual, very mechanically though. He once again lost the sense of time and space. This time, the initial fear however was less intense and soon gave way to utter confusion.
He could understand that his experiences had nothing to do with body but the mind. He consulted a neuro physician and he told him it was some sort of a panic disorder and he would do best to jerk it off his mind. The doctor asked him to stop doing deep thinking on issues, beyond his comprehension.
The doctor attempted to trivialize the issue telling him that majority of people on this earth had some mind disorder or other in varying intensity and most of them afforded to live out their lives carrying them reasonably successfully.
“Sanity is a fine line like a strand of your hair and most of us stand on the border; often susceptible to cross the line, inadvertently or otherwise”, the doctor said. He told him jokingly, “I am a doctor of minds but even I have a phobia that someday my wife will kill me. But still, I enjoy a delectable sex with her. It is rather my phobia that helps me do that as I always do it as if this would be my last with her”.
As these bouts became regular, Mayank turned determined to find a pattern to it. After few months, he could feel he had better control over his body even when he encountered varied degrees of formlessness and disconnect during such bouts. Mayank was not sure what the right way to deal with his problem was but he was however very sure that he could not do what his doctor advised. He could not jerk off the issue. He had to confront it and find an answer. His natural inquisitiveness egged him to do two things – understand the problem in its widest possible connotation and then find a lasting solution. He hooked on to all available resources on fear factors and especially the mind mechanisms.
Knowledge is embarrassing. It exposes us to the world of stark objectivity for which we are not always trained and prepared. You feel discomfited by the ignorance you had lived so far with and the subjectivity you indulged in. The knowledge about the complexities of brain and an interpretation of humanity through mind perspectives made him feel and live the shame of stupidity. Though he was too young to fully understand the intricate artistry of mind universe, he learnt his first major lesson of life – the criticality of communication in the overall intelligence of intellectual universe. It was ingrained upon his sensitive perception that he had to invest lots of time and energy to understand two core ideas – the media and communication, to understand life and its intricacies in entirety.
He was truly awestruck by the enormity and extent of mind disorders the humanity was faced with. There were so many phobias that he was almost sure that there was nothing that did not have the potential to spark off fear in a human mind. He was truly apprehensive and in great dismay that anybody at any given time could be affected by one mind disorder or the other. He was more troubled by the knowledge that people in large number all throughout ages in the long history of civilization were in great pains and sufferings because of something which doctors say were actually never there. A fear that was never there, a reason not fit for being depressed, a disability which never was one but the mind did accept them as if they were. And the scare that humanity has entered a phase where mind disorders would be the largest destabilizing factor for larger population made him very determined to find a lasting solution to it.
After initial confusion, he arrived at the truth that if devil could be in the mind, so could be God. He accepted that if devil was a man standing beyond his worst of disabilities and negativities, God was there standing just on the opposite side of it. He, standing beyond the best of the potentials and capabilities of his positive and uninhibited mind, was his own God. He got to know; mind is a mechanism of unlimited potential. All he needed to know was what limits and inhibits minds in its journey towards Godliness. He realized that mind was a value-neutral and objective media. What it opts, the devil or the God is not its own choice but dep
ends on something which programs it one way or the other. He came to a conclusion that communication to mind was the crucial thing. And the mind accepted thoughts and emotions as communication. Mind needed to have the right communication to head towards Godliness. That’s why, positive thoughts and emotions to a new and un-programmed mind were important.
He also understood that the problem with contemporary world was that minds were being flooded with negative communications since childhood. We have loaded our minds with lots of negative thoughts and ideas. The mind has been negatively programmed even before we could realize. The early socialization, prior to our own rational awareness, the hereditary inputs, the very competitive social environment etc send negative communication to mind. He realized; thought was the core programming language of mind. The thought is largely a social product and that’s why the society is primarily responsible for creating either devils or gods. He could understand the importance of a positive and constructive society in creating good minds. It was a cyclic chain. He could also understand that a society at any stage was more suitable for creating more devils than god.
He came to a conclusion that two things were very crucial inputs for mind and they needed very clear understanding. First was fear in its entirety and complete complexities and second was the sense of real and unreal. He understood it quite well that he needed to comprehend the spectrum of fears and its dynamics. Getting to the core of the multi-dimensionality of fears would make him understand the mysteries of life well. He was also not bothered too much by the enormity of the task. The management of fear would be tough but he was sure; it would not be as tough as the management of hunger, management of greed and management of sexuality which humanity had failed to do.
The acceptance of the primary need to understand fear helped him in unexpected way. As he grew up, he actually developed an objective perception about all his fears and anxieties. This objectivity helped him understand the power of the conscious mind over unconscious and sub-conscious mind. Not that he could conquer all his fears and anxieties but he had better control over his fears. His conscious mind stood him in good stead with a power of analyses of what was happening to him and why. This assured that fear was never out of control to reach a stage of panic.
In the progression of time, he got inclined to the idea that fear was actually good for him, or for anybody, who could have the objectivity standards to understand it. Fear was a very positive signal about the incidence of an unattained and unprepared mind. An unknown thing or idea cannot spark off fear. A known thing or idea has the similar capacity. It is things or ideas in between the two ends that create fears. A rope in a semi-dark room makes one panicky as it looks like a snake but even an actual snake in a totally dark room fails to create fear. A snake generating fear is good thing. The snake experts also know that its venom is deadly but they do not fear it because they have complete knowledge about snake behavior and all possible dynamics of its threat perception. Fear is an instant invite for positive action. Fear makes you accept that something is wrong and negative with your mind programming. You need to delete the program and write a new one with complete and objective knowledge about something which unleashed fear. Fear is an invitation to become your own god by embarking on a journey towards the best of your own potentials.
As he developed good understanding of fear, he realized that the formlessness, or what the doctor called unreality feeling was also not a bad thing either. He actually stared to use the unreality experience as a constructive tool. The objectivity standards also made him take his formlessness as just a media, like anxiety and fear. This formlessness or unreality was value-neutral and presented an opportunity for greater objectivity benchmarks. A very beneficial proposition for humanity!
He began to understand that minus or plus; pain or pleasure; was not the ideal state of being. It had to be a zero – a truly objective, value-neutral position. Most sins and aberrations of humanity were committed when humans drifted too far either in the plus of pleasure or minus of pain. Humans committed acts of banality and benediction, omission and commission on the basis of his or her judgment of the reality he or she perceived as facing at a particular moment of time and space. Quite often, the real which was identified as real was either more on the side of plus or minus, often off target of the real.
Mayank later on developed mastery over the craft and called it a trick. He could actually help himself on the onset of the bout of formlessness. Whenever, he felt his body and senses were too overwhelming or ruffled up, in minus or plus, and he could commit a mistake, he would slip into what he called the zero-mode. He had developed a way to trigger off the formlessness bout and as he welcomed it, he gained on the objectivity benchmarks for himself.
In the years to come, he used the technique to avoid many sins and wrongdoings which men his age would commit with aplomb. As he passed his prime of youthful years he was happy to discover that he had developed two personalities. The formlessness had turned into a personality which he felt remained silent and in the backstage, giving frontstage to his physical personality which was socially interactive. He successfully used one of his two personalities interchangeably to derive best of results for him. He even enjoyed his split personalities simultaneously, realizing very well that this had made him an enigmatic person in the eyes of most of his relatives, friends and colleagues. The liberal of them would call him maverick but most would prefer a ‘confused’ tag for him.
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