Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Beyond this world

Lokantharanghalil(In the other worlds ) of Nalapat Balamani Amma

Dr Suvarna Nalapat

Lokantharanghalil (written in 1955)was the ancestral rite performed by an illustrious niece to her illustrious uncle and Guru.In its preface ,noted critic kuttikrishnamaaraar wrote:In one glance it is an obituary.Even in subtle study it may seem so.But ,you may not find the things that you usually expect from an obituary.In the first six verses the subject is introduced and then a sigh arose ,but controlling even that sigh,a story of a wonderful world which is hitherto unfamiliar to the literary world is revealed by the poet.In between one or two sobs come up, but we can just guess them from the way she controls them”.Both the Guru and the disciple being theosophists one can expect that.

The heart which nourished her always with nectar of experiences has become still.The soft words which always dried her tears stopped their flow.The body which was considered as embodied love by her has become immobile.The loss of a Guru and a great person and uncle combined ,creates a natural sob in her heart.
My sob,Don’t pull back my great Guru.
Don’t obstruct that soul
Which is in search of greater experiences ..
The poem thus begins with the faith that the tears of relatives obstructs the movement of the dead in pure worlds of divine experiences and brings them down.It starts from the words where the uncle stopped his obituary on his dead wife(Kannuneerthulli).
Let me stop.
I may obstruct my beloved’s
Path in the upper worlds.
Thus ended the Guru’s obituary.The disciple takes the lost thread from that last word.Just in traditional Gurushishya way.She is not crying over his loss.But is accompanying his soul in his journey.A theosophist student,a student of Bardo ,might grasp the gravity of the subject.Let us accompany the Guru and Shishya in their journey .
The great soul alights the vehicle in the auspicious moment and the Thaijasa worlds open their doors of pearls to welcome him.The yogic eyes of the poet see the white clouds as the flowing garments of the twelve Adhitya,as Aadhivaahikaa of the soul.The dead soul was immersed in Swadhyaaya.Therefore in his closed eyes the past 67 years on this janma opens up as a book to be read.The experiences of pain and pleasure summated as an orderly law of energy brightens up in his soulview.Those lighted lively words may be revealing to him the reason for which he has taken this particular body.This is his most important and greatest moment of learning.In this moment,to reduce his tiredness,let the loving thoughts of relatives ,who are chanting the manthra “Soul is eternal” ,touch him as a breeze,the poet wishes.
Thoughts originate from one person and reaches and touches another.Embraces and caresses another.For this touch of souls nothing is an obstacle,neither the universe of name and form,nor the time.If we cry with severe passions and think passionately ,it will disturb the dead soul as if a storm.And pulls him back.Therefore the poet puts a stop to even a slightest sigh,and becomes a cool breeze to accompany him in his journey ,and wishes a happy journey to the Guru.

The face of the dead person is smiling due to the feeling of having achieved the greatest.He seems to be sleeping peacefully.We call the last sleep of the jeeva as death.The jeeva will awaken again in a shadowless world of bhuvarloka after ninety naazhika of death in this bhooloka.Probably,now the praanamayakosha wearing a grey inner dress,may be in an unconscious state ,in a dim light watching the body as an earthen pot with which he drank the essence of earth through sense organs.Athma is reluctant to severe all ties with the body.The mundane life is sorrowful.Yet to loose it is intolerable for a human soul.Even the dense dark cloud of sorrow become bright sunlight for the soul.The mundane sorrow itself becomes the transcendental bliss.Probably this is why the reluctance of every athma to leave the body,its vehicle.
The picture of this watching of body by the soul has to be compared with the poem Unarumpol(While awakening .written in 1963,eight years later)We can see a soul coming out of body in sleep to watch it.
Sleep is of three types.One is natural sleep which everyone of us experience each night.In this there are swapna(dreamstate)and sushupthy(dreamless state),and after a natural sleep,especially a sushupthi,our brain is calm and rested and all its troubles and tired feeling will be gone.The second type is yoganidra ,the sleepy state in Samadhi.This is better than a sushupthi because it gives a divine inner perception and an eternal feeling of rest and shanthi to brain.In such a state ,the poet had seen ,eyes open,the earth watching her with the lamp of moon.And she had sung:”what bliss” ,to describe the feeling.She compares it to death.The eternal bliss of solar energy is expressed as the death experience.Whatever the Guru had meditated in Chakravaalam with the softness of a bird’s feather,and movement of a grass,the disciple explains as the wings of the flying and the fluttering in wind and their shadow dance.The uncle has taught her the journey to ancestral and solar worlds and beyond .The niece could fly with her imagination to beyond the boundaries of the universe,from the four walls of her kitchen.The person who gives us this power of knowledge of self is the best Guru.Here,Nalapat Narayanamenon is such a Guru for the poet.That uncle ‘s body is lying in the corridor of the ancestral home clad in pure white clothes,with lamps of broken coconut shells around.She circumambulates that ancestor’s body,and touches his feet with her face,but those feet no longer feels any touch,and she does an aavaahan of his form into her heart bathing it in her tears.

That auspicious body is burned and its smoke encircles the home with clouds of sorrow.Every member of the family knew ..Hereafter the soft footsteps of this great person will not enliven this home!!The God Agni is the father of the ancestors.Therefore the best offering to agni is the body of a learned and compassionate man.That is offered to him.And the niece prays,as if a vedic rishi:”Agne,Be satisfied with this offering,and enter and brighten our ideas hereafter”The body is gone.But his ideas are given back by Agni to the survivors,because he is happy with their sacrifice.
I feel that the prayer of the learned niece has not been in vain ,and still in some of us ,at least, the ideas of the great Guru does live.

The praanamayakosha is the shadow of body.Only when it is destroyed the soul can enter the watery mandala.There,the seven layers of the otherworld is welcoming the footsteps of the great man.Watery mandala is the bhuvarloka of the ancestors.The seven layers of it has sorrows touching the earth below.And they are called the depths of paathaala.Those who were enjoying in violence are detained in them.And beyond that are higher ancestral worlds of vasu,Rudra,Aaditya and other devaas.The poet thinks ,My Guru is a free thinker.A person with good vratha.Therefore he can travel anywhere freely and investigate all worlds.No bad passions can make boundaries for a person who is having good vratha.In the ancestral world through which the soul passes,the directions are having comets,passionate emotional battles of love and hate and wonderful sights will go on brightening up the sky there.My Guru without being disturbed by any of them is going forward to the highest place and in his path our tears should not make a river of vaitharani.
The family members are now placing food for the dead soul with water and darbha grass.The prayer of the disciple is let this annam(food)with energy of love which can touch all the three worlds ,vibrate and let that vibrations touch Arya(the great Guru).The worship of the loving family members had always been a support for him in this world.So she hopes it will be the same in hereafter too.May be,from the skyscape of fragrant offerings,his blessings may be coming to us traveling in the wings of an unknown crow.Probably he may come to us in our dreams and through dreams to earth,just to make us happy and to give us his loving advice .Now he is in a mandala where there is no difference between in and out,and he is a witness of everything .Therefore ,the Guru ,who is naturally inclined to understand the psychology of the family,would definitely be able to fathom our grief and our feelings.He can pacify our sorrows just by his presence.Therefore,the poet says I would see him in my dreams and I will forget every grief with that vision.The all-witnessing energy of soul looking at the poet with lamp of wisdom is sometimes the Goddess,or sometimes the earth and sometimes ,as here,the departed Guru.The advaitha and the thanmayeebhaava with the natural forces gives a unprecedented purity to her images.
Now the athma is reaching the devabhoomi,traversing the passionate ancestral worlds.There he is served by spotlessly pure firy vibhoothi.The athma is enjoying the music of the spheres .He has become poornakaama.The thoughts,which were his sons (maanasaputhra)come as soumya forms and give him ecstacy.He becomes the friend of the sidha ,in creativity.Enjoying eternal bliss in those worlds with doors of sun and moon,that paramaguru ,see with their thoughts ,the loving people in the earth.May be when years come and go,the dust of the times may make his form faded in the family members’ minds.Still,that loving soul who is compassion incarnate will bestow only blessings to the coming generations,she feels.His love cannot be blotted even by the passage of time.
After a few divine days,the athma again leave behind the firy individualistic mandala,and become free from all dualities.The manomayakosha is lost.Then comes the energy world of Maharloka.There the door to countless janma open up.There the soul can see the upaadhichathushka seeds like pearls on the same thread,in the form of previous janmasamskaara’s colourful and bright Kaarana egg form.Then in the great pragna dawn the previous janma and the knowledge of the janma to come.There the soul is one with deva,manushya,animal,and plant and crores of organic and inorganic forms.The wish of the Guru as he had expressed in his poem Chakravaalam ,was this final attainment.
Upaadhichathushka are the four types of paramaanu of Kanaada.Prithwi,responsible for gross body,water responsible for kaamasareera,air and sky responsible for maanasasareera,and the chidaakaasa responsible for kaaranasareera.These are also called the bhoothachathushka(the four elements).Agnimandala is a combination of vaayu and akaasa.Beyond that is chidaakaasa ,the maharloka which is unmanifest and impersonal.Both are agneyam.But one is personal and the other impersonal.
The ishtadevatha of Nalapat was Baalaaparameswari.His poet-niece is also called Baala.And his second wife also was Baala.The soul of the Guru becomes one with his ishtadevatha in maharloka.
The devi is wearing the seven spheres on her golden chain,and creating long kalpa waves in the eternity with each of her breaths.A soul which has become one with her does not need any other ornament.There is no other work lovable than becoming one with her.Nothing more pleasurable.Accompanying Guru’s soul,the poet’s soul gets that experience of being one with his as well as hers ishtadevatha.For the dead soul it is an eternal oneness.But for the poet,as a witness ,it is the beginning of a return journey to earth too.She has to come back.In that return journey she understands how a soul comes back to a new body ,to a new janma.

Sakshathkaara is a yoganidra.A movementless Samadhi.But again new waves form.Movement is creation.When the calls from the earth become strong,the waves become strong,and they lead to a new birth.In a world of new experience,..The new sciences,the new nations,new races ,the earth calls back and attracts the soul .Who is not interested in seeing ones own reflection in a loving eye?Who is not interested in reading ones own growth and power in a new voice,a new form?Therefore even great souls reincarnate.The soul weaves a new body with the strong willpower.A faultless new young body.A mind which is softer ,sharper,beautiful ,bright and compassionate than the previous one.More pure thoughts in the mind .The subtle body comes back searching for a good atmosphere,good home,a good mother’s womb and born in a new body to carry out what the will wants…The soul comes down the same steps as it went up.By that time none of us may be here on this earth.But,as the soul of my Guru comes down the steps,He might temporarily remember us ,this old ancestral house where his previous body was protected ,nourished ,and loved.There may be noone here ,at that time.The shadowy trees might have become coal.These fields,these paths ..these pictures long lost in time..These fragmentary memories of this dear village …In the new janma also he will enjoy everything this earth can provide to a good deserving soul…He will again give everything he had achieved by his heavenly life to this world…Yet,the poet says,my heart aches with a thought…That golden dream ,that dear form , that loving Guru…Will I be able to find him again on this earth?On this slippery path?Even if we meet would we be able to recognize each other?
That question is a controlled sob ,just as in Kannuneerthulli(teardrops)of her Guru.
He has said:-
There may be more births
We may see and come near again
But,can fate again give us
The same love,the same relation?

The eternal object
Remain in all janmaas

It may come again
In another dress
To fill my heart
With love

But ,do we know that ?Do we recognize the old relations when we meet them again?

That question still reverberates in my mind.When I meet someone from the far off births and recognize them,and feel that they are unable to recognize me,the gravity of the words of these two Gurus,in my Guruparampara reverberates with ten thousand horse power in my thoughts….

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