July 17, 2013

I see colours but I don't see shapes!

I firmly used to believe that I am a person, an individual who doesn't go well with the institutions. I wanted to be a rebel. I wanted to feel like I'm more important than any organization. Any group wielding it's power frustrated me, making me feel like the world was unfair, that the individual had no hope against an organization.

And then I met him...

"What are colours, what are shapes?"

When he asked me this question once, I laughed at him. For it was so silly. Colours and shapes are... 

He continued, 
"Well, they're nothing, really. Scientifically speaking, they're a bunch of electrical impulses that our brain perceives and understands. Philosophically speaking, they are defined in more ways than I know of. But what are they?"

He took a pause and started, "When I walked into the room on the left, I just saw the bed, the red covers on it, the velvet pillows and the red draperies. But I kept staring on, and the rigidness of everything disappeared. The velvet was no more velvetty, the draperies were no longer held by the poles, the red flowed down into the floor and the bed was now just a pool of red. All I had to do was keep staring at the room. The room so familiar in colour and shape, but all the shape in it had vanished."

"What a loon!"I thought and wanted to walk away.

"Well, you can do this too, just keep staring at this room, just use your eyes and pull the field off focus. Your brain doesn't see the shapes anymore, but of course, we see the colours. The colours are now free, they've been let go, not bound by the institutions of rigidity and shape."

The rigidity that the colours were having in their existence is now removed. I've freed them. But they are still thereabout. I asked, "The red never goes, does it?"

He replied, "I closed my eyes and imagined the room on the left, and now I imagined the room on the right. In my mind's eye, the red room was no longer my environment. If you meditate for long enough, you can escape the room too. You can turn it blue, or like me, you can render it colourless."

So, now I choose to see nothing but colours, all around me... Colours that I can control. 

I don't see shapes. I don't see confinement, I don't see rigidity. 

So, I don't cry against institutions, because I freed myself from them. 
The institutions and I can now exist peacefully, mutually excluded in philosophy, but as always, sharing the same space, being the same entity, just like the colours and the shapes. But I can be sure that just like everything else, I'm temporary too, I'm imaginary too.

But who was HE? Well, should it matter? I can only tell you his colour and shape, but WHO he is, is a question far beyond the scope of descriptions.

February 17, 2013

Of wanting a future

What did I want? Did I want to live? Was there any point to living after being shot down in battle, rendered useless. I groped around to find a place to sit. It was inside a long hallway and the lights were blue - dark blue. As I sat, I saw my wound. A bullet had gone straight through my armor and all the way into my intestine. I didn't think I had any purpose to live anymore. And then there was silence, as beautiful as a garden on a summer morning. The silence was a great deal of change from the dull blue around me. It was green, it was yellow and it was definitely bright. I was a child again.

In my house, there were a bunch of guests. I really couldn't see them, but I listened from the upper end of the staircase. Could I know them? And I stayed there till they left. I didn't want to know them and I walked downstairs, there was nobody. The living room and the kitchen were empty. I searched for my parents and started crying. A deep desire in me for food made me want to open the fridge and scavenge. The fridge was empty and cold. The lights turned dull. And I walked back upstairs, crying, alone and the house seemed to get bigger and emptier. I could hear them, but nobody was there.  I wanted nothing more than belonging.