There was one candle on my first birthday cake and there'll be one candle on my last. Through this journey from one candle to one candle, I'll live in a drama where sometimes I am a villain, sometimes a hero, often a bit player, and mostly an extra, watching events pass by in which I have no say.
It is a morality tale, this drama, with lessons in every act. No one shouts 'quiet' on the sets here, and there is plenty of noise. I feel sorrow & joy, I feel disappointment & triumph, I feel dismay & satisfaction, I feel excitement & boredom, I feel pain & ecstasy, and so many other things.
And none of it is 'real'. Oh, it is real enough to make me cry or laugh, but these tears and laughter are felt by the celebrator of birthdays, the actor whose role I am playing this time around, not by who will go home at the end of this episode.
Did I tell you that I have been 'born' countless times? That I have died the same number of times, less one? No?
In truth, I am who you see as me, at the mundane level only, but I am not this body, nor this mind. And, it may surprise you to know, neither are you.
We are just actors here on this set, playing roles we decided ere we took birth. We voluntarily subjected ourselves to this emotion ridden existence in the physical world to learn things that can only be learnt here. We set our course true but it was modified when our ego took the tiller. As of now, I am struggling with it to keep the bow pointed towards where I want to go, before I depart this plane.
Mourn not my passing, for the real actor does not die, though he may lie in his coffin on the stage. There have been many coffins and many funeral pyres in which I was the centrepiece, and there will be many more, till I do not need to learn from these dramas any more.
All these roles that I have played on various stages at times past, live on in me at some level, sometimes appearing in my dreams, sometimes in my actions and often in my thoughts. There are men in here and women, too, at this point, for me, perhaps in equal measure. We are collectively who I am.
All the while I keep thinking, ‘who is it beyond my physical self, beyond my body-mind?’ Who is the 'life' in 'me', the user of the consciousness, guiding my senses? At a deeper level I know that only when I stop 'thinking', I will realise the truth of who I am, but this is not easy to do.
The mind is too strong, too protective of its existence and too wary of inner silence. It insists that these senses that I use are my only gateway to the world, but I know it lies. Or, perhaps, it does not know any better, and its awareness is confined to its realm. That I can consider possibilities beyond it, gives me hope.
These senses mediated by the mind belong to the actor whose role I am playing. The real me has super-senses held at bay at this stage of my advancement by these mental ones. I can only access them if I completely silence my insistent mind.
Till that happens, the number of candles on my birthday cakes will keep changing, till they return to one, and then, beyond the role-play, none.
We will meet in the hereafter again, you and I. Then we will assess what we have learnt and what more is needed. We will perhaps script another drama together, and light more birthday candles for each other.
In the meantime, in the here and now, let's make the best of what we have on this stage, with as much harmony as we can muster.
Kishore Asthana