Tag: Oneness

The Old Man: a story and a homage

Here’s a story. Once upon a time, very recently, there was an old man who would give his hair to the birds on his farm for them to make their nests. It seemed completely cuckoo to those who caught him in the act. “Is he out of his mind!” exclaimed an incredulous visitor to the old man’s wife, who probably laughed the histrionics away. Because…how do you explain?

How do you communicate in words the truth that you are just an extension of all sentient and non-sentient beings, which you term “Nature”? There’s nothing you own that doesn’t also belong to the other. And if truth be told, and accepted, what you are is constantly brought into being by the all the “otherness”. One could liken it to a cat’s cradle. One part of the pattern comes into being because of another. You move one thread, the design changes. You move one finger the whole web is tugged. All because it is one continuous whole and very absorbedly in love with its entirety. But, the ordinary mind resorts to the abstract act of “separating” this oneness of experience into bite-sized pieces of information, it just seems too overwhelming. It’s another point altogether that this web of Existence is self-operating. There’s nothing that needs to be broken down to survive. In fact, the more you break it down, the more you feel isolated, afraid.

Coming back to the story of the old man: He preferred being out of his mind, where out of the mind meant free of separation from his environment. To him, it was a natural system springing from the simplest knowledge that to live is to live large. Large, not in the sense of wielding worldly power, but large as in an expanded sense of being. Material grandeur does indeed bring a certain kind of confidence, but that kind has a shelf life. There comes a day when, no matter what you put on the shelf, it stops affording you even the smallest degree of pleasure. Or, as in many cases, the shelves are suddenly left empty and all you now have is your naked, bewildered self.

But the old man lived in no fear of shelves. Fortunately for him, and much more for those who came to know him, his being grew to touch the self of the forests, together with all that lived in it.  Over the years, all that he came to imbibe from Nature, found a place so deep in his knowing, that, when he fell down a hillside one afternoon, his body hugged itself into a ball, quite like a Panda’s, and gently rolled all the way down till he came to a standstill at the bottom – as though it was the most natural thing to do for a man when he falls. Become a panda. Then, he merely stood up, dusted his pants, and walked on. Not one broken bone, not one torn ligament.

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We go about searching the web, rummaging through bookshops and libraries to study the ways of the ancients. We think that shamans have tricks. But, it’s quite simple: All that we breathe, observe, allow and honour becomes us. The macro awakens in the micro bit by bit, stretching and yawning like a beautiful, stunning, majestic god if you but slow down to connect. You become fearless. Your awareness takes the fluid shape of the whole, which spontaneously guides, protects and keeps you. Just so, the bear, the reindeer, the moose, the blackbird, the squirrel, the night sky, the rain and snow, and the spruces and pines, and the soil…all of it had become one with the old man’s sense, his knowing and his body. He had become a living extension of it. And that is love.

And so, he refused to name books to read when asked, spoke little and stayed away from social gatherings. “Nature, every day, is new. I know nothing about it. It’s too big”, he said in reply to a question about it and returned to what was at hand. In short, he refused to provide or be part of substitutes of the original experience. When he wasn’t farming or hunting, or looking through herbs and roots, he bent over paintings, sketches and wood carvings of the forests and its myriad forms of life. And he didn’t make them surreal or abstract. A branch was exactly that branch and no other, with every knob, gnarl and twist in its body being irreplaceable. A bear on the ridge was a bear just as he saw it carry its muscle and form with that slow, steady power. The magnificence of things lay in the current inside them, which produced the non-different form. There’s nothing left to add to what’s already extraordinary, and that’s why it must remain what it is. Simple. Ordinary. Accessible.

When one is so utterly attuned to the flow of Existence, it becomes clear that its two polarities of personal survival and empathy for the other, live and/or let live, are eternally engaged in a delicate dance. To survive, humans not only take more than we give, but also what we cannot give: LIFE. How do you unpack that kind of taking? The old man answered, “It should always cost you to take a life. It should always hurt to kill an animal…” Why must it hurt? So that you don’t become dead to another’s dying, another’s sacrifice, and, thus, know that you owe them. Cost. To be aware of the fact that you aren’t entitled. You may never take more than what you truly need; never waste what you take, but honour it by using every last bit; never kill the first thing you see for it may be the last of its kind. And that also means that you may not hunt what’s healthy (or a child or a mother) and is needed for maintaining balance in Nature. Take only what’s hurt, old or ill, and is dropping out from the cycle of life naturally. And so, “Why run or be afraid of the animal? If it’s healthy, you won’t hunt it. If it’s dying, what’s there to run from?” said the old man.

Being aware of the process of Nature eliminates fear. Once you relax, hunger loosens its grip on you. And when you are not hungry, whether in the body or in the ego, you can just be “with IT”, instead of against IT”. Indigenous people from everywhere, since ancient times, make offerings to the spirits of the forests, rivers, seas and Earth from the hunt, the gathering, the produce. That’s simply an acknowledgement of being one with IT. That’s man’s role in continuity, in the act of balancing. The other must prosper for you to prosper. It should always cost you…

But the old man’s idea of being sensitive wasn’t limited to hunting. It extended to the dignity of being. Once, when he was a young father, there naturally came a day when his little girl began to wonder about homosexual relationships. Were they alright? Wasn’t there anything funny about it? That day, in the forest (and perhaps many times later) he pointed out to her a pair of deer, both male, displaying same-sex sexual behaviour, and said that same-sex activity, courtship, pair bonding, and affection is very much in and of Nature. It’s there in birds, marine animals and many species across the planet, and, therefore, nothing to be questioned or ridiculed. The girl saw the deer, utterly innocent and comfortable in Nature, just the way they were. Here was dignity of being from what was made plain to her eyes in the kingdom of Nature, so different from the separateness in all the man-made systems.

If you were to, thus, know and become open to the pulse of Existence…
if you could celebrate the fact that the flow of life is too big to be known, boxed, controlled…
if you were to find out that to be humble is to be free to be yourself…
you would learn that the only moral principle one need adhere to is…
Oneness. Thou shalt not see, feel or act separate, or higher, or lower.

The old man, so vast that he couldn’t be contained any longer, is now no more. He flew out of the remaining constraints of life on July 20th, 2023. His name, which seldom mattered to him, but which everyone takes with reverence and love, was Rolf Ilher. His daughter and my friend, Tove Elise Ilher, is my connection to his stories and wisdom, and this endless love he was always in. I am certain that he is everywhere. He is with the fox that would cuddle up on his chest for warmth in winter. He is where the white wagtails have made their nests with his hair. He’s there where the deer walk together in harmony. He’s in the hunter watching the young and bold graze safely. He’s in the painting of the bear on the ridge. He’s there in the alive and breathing forest floor of moss and mushrooms, just where we kneel and kiss the ground, so that more like him may come. 

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A story, a memory and a question

It’s 7 PM. The vast winter sky is a deep slate-blue, and quiet. I am restless. There’s a story I have to tell you. But it has brought me, on the waves of some fundamental connection, to something else first. A primeval memory: Under the same sky, in another circle of time, my ancestor humans stood offering chants of peace to the Soul of the Universe. I am there now, at that fire ceremony, under a commune of giant trees, by an ancient river. There’s that bright, purifying smell of camphor and juniper rising with the smoke. Flames dance and crackle, sending up sparks of energy. Hushed bodies sway with the rhythm of one intention. And the harmonic hum of a chant rises on their voices, invoking peace.

“Om dyauh shantir–antariksham shantih,
prithivih shantir–aapah shantir–aushadhayah shantih,
vanaspatayah shantir…

The Meeting (Raghu Soman, 2015)

On it goes like an enormous wheel of flowing electricity, encompassing everything from the great void to all the gods of the world, from Absolute Consciousness to the trees, the waters and the dwellers of this Earth. 

The words cycle in my head now, turning like rosary beads. They expand into symbols of life, death and regeneration. And I dive deep into its many meanings.

These lines of the Shanti Mantra are a diagram for the layers of ‘Being’. I see them radiating from the macrocosm to the micro. And how they maneuver, gently and steadily, your attention to every form of consciousness in this cosmos. The stars, the thinking ones, the standing ones, the flowing ones, the… You sit one inside the other, just like nesting dolls.

Did you notice that the chant is also everyone’s address in expanded notation?
And it is your inner skin and outer? You never go anywhere alone! It all moves with you, at all times, even when you are hiding from yourself…
And it is a method to plug in to the Source yourself. It shows you the inlet and the outlet, if you listen close enough.
It is also the simple realisation that THE REST OF IT IS AS ALIVE AS you. Though you can’t touch the core, you cannot not touch it, for it is IN YOU. It is the mother of all paradoxes.

The buzz of meanings stops, dropping me back into the palm of the present, leaving me to wonder what happened. How did this spectacular celebration break up? How did we become “man”, as different from and superior to “plant” and “animal”? The conqueror of seas and mountains? The ruler of our own life-givers? The divider of our own grand self? This brings me right back to the edge of the story I had to tell you, which drives this question. An incident took place at The Little Space, the garden in Pune where Shambhavi and Maali Kaka are the caregivers. Here it is for you to look into:

Some months ago they had planted Lemongrass in the small sunny patch of her society. It grew lush and healthy with the care it received. One day, a man from the neighboring twin building came in, uprooted one of those Lemongrass plants and walked away. Just like that. He did not ask the gardeners if he could take it, if seeking the plant’s permission seemed too far out. He did not stop to consider what events his action might perpetuate.

But too far out is where we need to go. Out and beyond the mind.

Shambhavi saw him walk out the gate, the plant dangling by his hand, and ran after him. To his own mind, he had merely taken an inexpensive and common plant, simply to plant it in his own building. So, he had to be told that it was not done.

You cannot ‘take’ without having personally gone through the rituals. The cycles of effort and patient waiting and watching over. 

She let him take the plant, it was already uprooted. He went away, hopefully, a bit sensitized. But the story did not end there. Within a few days of this occurrence, the Lemongrass left behind began to show signs of being ill. It was almost as if life went out of them. No matter what solutions were applied, the remaining plants waned.

“The soul of these plants seems to have gone with the one that was taken away,” said Maali Kaka to Shambhavi, after searching his memory box for the wisdom of his land. In non-spiritual words, what this means is that a group of trees or plants growing together is an entire system, an energetic network, a world. You uproot one, you expose the rest to an uncertain fate by having disturbed their underground lives.

“…Weaker members [of a forest], who would once have been supported by the stronger ones, suddenly fall behind.”
-Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees

The Lemongrass did not revive. It’s a bare spot in the garden now.

Discussing this event deeper, Shambhavi said, “It goes to show how we have divided ourselves, as well as this Earth. The man took the plant from this space to another one he considers ‘his home’. Would it have mattered where the plant grew if the man believed that this whole Earth was his ONE HOME? Would he have stolen the plant had he remembered that all trees and plants everywhere in the world are family?”

Would there be wars and pandemics, if we remembered that we belonged to this land and not the other way round?

The story ends there. But does it?

It’s like that Transformation Game that goes on forever–until one actually goes through the metamorphoses, and steps up to the next level. Right now, we are all stuck at this precipice in our collective story. We have climate change conventions and treaties, but no certainty. For there is one huge part of us that wanted to go faster than the other species and win the game. So fast, that going whole’heart’edly was forsaken–which is the sole condition of this game. It’s all or none. We cannot escape this level till each one of us is on the same page. And at the same pace. The pace of the Nature.

But how do we get there?

It’s all there. The film is already running. Enter that loop again. There’s a lion resting on the rocky ledge, even as tender-fleshed deer graze within leaping distance. He just ate and is not hungry. There’s no reason for greed. The elephants are walking down to the lake, balancing delicately their huge bodies. They do not seem or feel cumbersome. They have no fight with how they are. The eagle soars without so much as an extra beat of the wings. Her power is not in demonstrating it, but in relishing her glide. The fruits and flowers come and go not in competition with each other, but in completion of a seasonal rhythm. There’s no need anywhere in Nature to steal, divide or conquer.

Slowing down to be in step with THIS is to have enough and to be enough. And that’s RICH! Slowing down is to be ‘attentive’ is all that is needed to transform. Watching it is all the method you need to know.

In Maori cosmology, they say, ‘Ko te awa ko au’. It means, ‘I am the river and the river is me’. It is the same river that flows by the forests of the fire ceremony. The same land, water and forest that run along to create this world. Our existence is the same. It is the biggest, most beautiful identity ever. And what happens to a plant anywhere is what happens to you and me.

So, we wish the plant that was uprooted from The Little Space good health and peace. May it grow… We kneel and kiss the ground on which it now stands. “Sa ma shantiredhi…” May the same peace flow into all of us.