The kaleidoscope of stars is surrounding me on all sides. They are dancing around in a strange somnambulic way. How can there be so much radiance in one place? I am again lying down on the ground looking at Annabel, which shines just above me. Only the crickets are singing, otherwise a beautiful silence. I am musing to myself whether I should return to this great subject: the mind of the universe. A thought flickers through my mind: who am I to even touch such a subject, while my mind is so puny that I cannot understand who I am? Then I smile to myself thinking “Have the great prophets understood who they were? I doubt it. If they did, they probably would have never entered the thorny path of enlightening of others.” Annabel is watching my ruminations from a distance. But does not say anything. “Who am I?” I ask myself explicitly. And “where am I?” Now Annabel subtly enters the discourse.
A. You are where you are, comfortably lying on your plastic sheet.
H. Well, it is not such a great revelation to be told that.
A. Perhaps it is, if you think about it deeper.
So I think about it deeper. Yes, there is this enormous sense of peace around me and within me; and also this great sense of freedom.
A. Enjoy this sense of freedom. Just enjoy being here as you are. Forget your continuous ruminations how to justify this and that; how to make your knowledge deeper and more coherent. There is no need for that.
H. What do you mean? I must know in order to be.
A. Perhaps not so. To be as you are is sufficient.
H. It can’t be. I must know — even that I am here…
A. You see you are again disturbing your tranquility and your beautiful freedom with your ceaseless (and often useless) inquiry. Yes, you can just be within the fold of freedom and peace — without thinking and ruminating.
I have followed her advice. The sense of my well-being is simply all pervading. I am trying not to think. But I observe the state of my being. Why is this freedom so all embracing and profound — in the theatre of stars and not elsewhere — I do not know. But I know the feeling of it. I am one with the stars. Not completely dissolving into their stellar substance but being completely wrapped by their presence. Why this freedom and peace? Because all earthly matters pale in significance. All. The trivial and the so-called important.
The Theatre of the stars is one and only. If you spend in it some time, you understand what it is all about, or at least are beginning to understand. We, humans, are all gazing at the stars from time to time — but most of the time mindlessly. How can we be so torpid and un-seeing? Is it because we are thinking too much? No, it can’t be so. It is the wrong kind of thinking that alienates us from ourselves, from nature and the stars.
Now I realize that I have been ruminating myself. So I am trying to bring myself back to the pristine state of only being, while enjoying this enormous freedom of my state of being. In a subtle subconscious way, my mind has been trying to answer the questions: “How is this peaceful state of being important to our well-being? Why do we ruin our peaceful well-being with continuous rushing and half-baked and often aggressive thinking”?
Annabel has been smiling in the background and was not commenting. She knew that I was experiencing one of the most important hours of my life. And she also knew that I might not be able to share it with anybody on Earth. The solitude of a lonely stargazer? Not quite that, but the sense that you are learning something so beautiful and profound that your heart and mind are singing with delight. Yet you also feel sadness because you might not be able to share what the stars have told you.
A couple of days later, I asked myself what was the most important thing that I learnt on this evening of Great Freedom among the stars? As I looked again and again over the starry constellation, the overwhelming feeling was that the universe is AFFIRMATION, that being itself is affirmation, that life is affirmation. It was so clear to me that the universe and existence (including human) is affirmation. No ifs and buts, no stutters and stammers — only one splendid continuous affirmation. It was so easy to accept this affirmation while gazing at the stars.
Why then, I asked myself, has human thought made everything so twisted, problematic, doubtful, cynical and skeptical? Why are so many philosophies gloomy, grim, pessimistic, cynical and nihilistic? My answer was that people, and philosophers especially, do not spend enough time with the stars and do not seriously look at them.
COMMENT